There Be Dragons
by KillerGeishaYumi
Summary: Inspired by a couple of other modern retellings of the movie, this is my take on the military idea. Some details have been changed besides the addition of technology (most notably, the technical and social classifications of the dragons), but it's otherwise what you saw in theaters in 2010 if you were lucky. First attempt at an army fic. R&R!
1. Chapter 1

_This is Berk. It's twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing-To-Death. It's situated solidly on the Meridian of Misery._

_My village is a military camp. It is, in a word, sturdy. It was never supposed to be a village – and for that matter, it wasn't really supposed to be here – but seven generations ago an army was engaged in a battle, suffered a full-scale defeat, and a battalion got stranded way out here. In the subsequent fight for survival we became farmers, fishermen, and hunters – and the island's resources provided excellently._

_The only problems with this new land are the pests._

_You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes. We have…_

_DRAGONS._

_Most people would have left. Not us. First of all, we couldn't leave because all our transports had been badly damaged (and we still don't have enough of them repaired to evacuate or enough supplies stocked to get anywhere). Second, well…our ancestors had already suffered one crushing defeat at the hands of a human army, and they had no intention of conceding to an army of fire-breathing, hot-blooded reptiles. Yeah, and we of the here and now inherited their stubbornness issues._

_My name is Hiccup. Yeah, I know, great name; but, it's not the worst. Some people actually have normal ones here, but there's also a Berkian school of thought that if a child is given a name that sounds like a callsign, they will become great soldiers. Got me who first came up with that, but it was at least three generations ago and maybe more like four._

Hiccup dove out of the burning barracks. Fortunately, only the outside was on fire, so he didn't cause a backdraft when he opened the door. Faceless soldiers in full armor rushed all around him, firing madly at the dragons that were spewing fire back. It was madness; _loud_ madness. He double-checked his headset and tightened the seals – and in that moment of distraction, an explosion threw him over. He went ahead and finished his systems double-check on the ground, praying that no one and nothing would step on him. Only when he was sure he wouldn't lose his equipment in the next shockwave did he scramble back to his feet.

Everyone who was old enough to get outside by themselves had one of those headsets and was expected to wear them under penalty of getting deafened during the raids. They filtered the sounds of battle down to a level safe enough for the human eardrum to take, and also had communications built in that could be activated manually to talk to someone on the other side of town if you had their call signature – or automatically by proximity. For example, every time Hiccup got within ten feet of a soldier and they noticed him, they shouted at him to get back inside without even bothering to touch their headsets or properly identify themselves.

A massive hand snatched him back from a jet of fire. An equally massive voice boomed over the system. "WHAT IS _HE_ DOING OUT AGAIN –" Hiccup was turned to stare into a dark visored helmet. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT? GET INSIDE!" And he staggered as the big man shoved him in the direction of Weapon Management.

_That's General Stoik. I guess that would make him the chief, since he's the highest-ranking officer. They say that when he was a baby, he blew a dragon's head clean off its shoulders with a pistol._

_Do I believe it?_

_Yes, I do._

Stoik threw an empty cart at a flying dragon, breaking the cart and staggering the dragon enough to make it drop its load. Sheep are pretty resilient; must be all the wool padding.

"What have we got?" he asked the nearest lieutenant.

"Most of the usual, sir," was the reply. "Gronkles, Nadders, Zipplebacks – oh, and Corporal Hoark saw a Monstrous Nightmare." Then the lieutenant had to duck and cover as a blast of fire hit one of the roofs and scattered shingles everywhere.

The General didn't flinch. "Any Night Furies?" he asked as he flicked a cinder off his shoulder plate.

"None so far, sir."

"Good."

Hiccup slid through the door and past a man who looked like a walking limb-replacement advertisement. The man's voice grated through his headphones.

"Ah, there you are; nice of you to join the party. I thought you'd been carried off."

Hiccup tugged the mouthpiece down from where it had been knocked. "Who, me? No, I'm way too muscular for their taste." With a little effort – all right, a lot of effort – he managed to get a rather large gun back on the wall from where it had fallen in some shake. "They wouldn't know what to do with all…this." He brandished his arms and gestured at his chest. On someone bigger, the gestures might have looked dramatic, or at least significant. On him…

"Well, they need toothpicks, don't they?"

_The captain with the hardware limbs and bad attitude is Gobber. Officially retired from active work on account of his injuries, he's in charge of supplying functional weapons and ammunitions to the active soldiers and repairing the damaged ones they give back. I've been assigned as his assistant and a sort of apprentice ever since I was little. Well – littl_er_._

Fire splashed down the wall of a house. Yes, _splashed_. It seemed that the dragons most commonly found on and around islands had fire-breath that behaved like water or oil. This meant, of course, that water couldn't put their fires out and in fact could often make it worse. It's why buckets of dirt and sand stood at the corner of pretty much every building, and there was a steady demand for waterless fire extinguishers – which was what the fire brigade was carrying towards the burning house just then, to blast the flames with compressed CO2.

The fire brigade was completely armored up, helmets and all. They could only be identified because they were technically the only teenage privates in town this year, and only told apart from a distance by size and shape. Fishlegs Ingerman was the largest private; his bulk caused people to overestimate his age – while his round, rather sweet face caused them to underestimate. Putting the two together pretty much gave people the right answer of fifteen. Snotlout Jorgenson was second-biggest, and had more clearly defined muscles through his suit. The twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston, were a little shorter than Snotlout and much thinner – and were only distinguishable from each other because Ruffnut was getting curvy and Tuffnut had slightly wider shoulders. Both went against regulations and wore their blond hair very long; Ruff braided hers while Tuff let his hang loose.

Then there was Astrid Hofferson. Tall as Snotlout, curvier than Ruffnut and stronger than Tuffnut (without getting bulky in either department), not even dragonfire was hotter than she. Her blonde tresses were just within regulation length, hidden under her helmet in tight braids; her face was hidden by her visor, but Hiccup knew her eyes were vibrant blue and that she always had a self-confident smirk on her lips. He'd had everything about her memorized ever since girls in general started becoming interesting to him, though he'd never yet gotten the courage to speak to her.

_Oh, their job is so much cooler._

Hiccup leaned forward as if to climb out the window, only to be fished backward by a metal hook. "Oh, come on – let me out, sir? I need to make my mark!"

"Oh, you've made plenty of marks," Gobber told him, prodding him in the shoulders, "All in the wrong places."

"Please, two minutes, I'll kill a dragon; it'll be worth a promotion, my life will get infinitely better – I might even get a date!"

Gobber shook his head. "By the time a gun has enough force in it to kill any decently-sized dragon, it's too heavy for you to aim and the recoil throws you half a block. You can't even shoot one of these!" and he waved a tangle-field gun just as an incoming sergeant reached in the window after it. Tangle-field guns were mostly good for knocking dragons out of the air, so they could then be killed on the ground.

"Okay, fine – but this will shoot it for me." Hiccup patted the device he'd constructed fondly. It wasn't a new idea (essentially it was a wheelbarrow that opened up into a tripod, upon which a weapon could be placed when it was too heavy to use by hand) but it had mostly gone out of service as the soldiers of Berk became strong enough to just carry the weapons that would mark dragons. Hiccup was too small and light to carry most destructive weapons – as Gobber had just pointed out – so he had to make use of things that others took for granted.

Unfortunately for his appearance of competence, the stand sprang open and flung a tray that had been left on the device. It shot past Gobber and out the open window to rebound off a soldier's helmet.

Gobber wasn't in the mood for anything like this. "Now see, this right here is what I'm talking about!"

Hiccup tried to stand his ground as Gobber advanced on him. "Just a minor calibration issue, sir…"

"Hiccup, if you ever want to get out there and fight dragons, you need to stop all…" Gobber waved his hands at Hiccup and paused, looking for a place to start, and finally just pointed, "This."

"But you just pointed to all of me!" Hiccup protested.

"Yes, that's it! Stop being all of you!"

Hiccup narrowed his eyes and nodded. "Oh…"

Gobber mimicked his expression. "Oh yeah…"

"You sir, are playing a dangerous game. Keeping this much…raw…soldier-ness…contained?" Trying to ignore Gobber's expression – which looked suspiciously like a mountain lion watching a house kitten in a tizzy – he held himself as tall as he could and waved a fist in the air. "There will be consequences!"

"I'll take my chances. Gun, repair, now," and he dropped a baby cannon into Hiccup's arms, the weakened spot in the muzzle plainly visible.

Conceding defeat – for now – Hiccup carried the gun to his workplace and got to work on it. Simply patching didn't work, especially not when it was already starting to crack; he had to cut the damaged part out and fit a new piece of metal in its place.

_One day I'll get out there. Because killing a dragon is everything on Berk._

_All dragons come in four sizes: Tiny-Tooth, Short-Wing, Broad-Wing, and Titan-Wing. Each is twenty times heavier than the size below it, and is sized accordingly; as one might expect, Titan-Wing kills are the most prized. How prized a Titan kill is depends on how common its smaller cousins are – in a sense, how likely it is that one would have had some practice at dealing with it. They have unofficial Greek-letter classification based on status granted._

_Delta dragons are the most common in the lower sizes; all are water dragons, always classified as Tidal, and they most often strike at the docks. They stand at one in twelve of the Titan-Wing dragons. Killing one of them is sure to get me at least noticed._

_Gamma dragons are slightly less common in the smaller sizes, though they number one in six of the big guys. Half of them are Tidal class and the rest are Tracker or Boulder; Zipplebacks are among these guys. They are twice the status of Delta dragons._

_Beta dragons are the most diverse, comprising half of all the known dragons and existing evenly in all four sizes. Nadders and Gronkles are both Beta; taking down either in Titan form will definitely get me a girlfriend._

_Then there are the Alpha dragons; only the best soldiers take those on. Like the Gammas, they are one in six; unlike the Gammas, they don't show up at all in Tiny-Tooth or Short-Wing, and rarely in Broad-Wing. I'll have to look this up to be sure, but I think half of them are Stoker-class while the other half are in Strike. Monstrous Nightmares are Alpha, and they seem to know it. Their fire is on the extremely short list of dragon fire that can actually be easily put out by water – which is a good thing, because they have this nasty habit of coating themselves in it when attacking._

_But the real prize is a dragon no Berkian has ever seen. We call it the…_

"NIGHT FURY!"

There was a battle outside between roaring, flaming dragons and men with firearms; Hiccup was inside a weapons workshop, running a small electrical saw on metal. This should give anyone some idea of how loud this dragon's incoming shriek was, that with all that noise going on he _still_ heard it. He dropped his tools and jumped for the window, and was just in time to see a sentry tower explode.

_This thing never steals food, never shows itself, and…NEVER MISSES._

_It's the only dragon to earn the status-quo title Omega. No one has EVER brought down a Night Fury._

_Which is why I'm going to be the first._

Gobber secured a grenade launcher attachment to his arm. "Man the fort, Hiccup – they need me out there." He hobbled to the door and, as if realizing that his instructions were inadequate, turned around. "Stay. Put. There."

Hiccup stood there at attention, staring blankly back at Gobber as the big man rushed out the door.

Thirty seconds later he was rushing out the door himself, pushing his contraption for all he was worth and dodging soldiers left and right. Getting outside camp, he set up and switched everything on. He also folded his mouthpiece up so he wouldn't be getting his own panting in his ears.

"Come on, come on…give me something to shoot at, give me something to shoot at…"

It was very quiet this far out. Also very dark; he could see every star in the sky. There were only two tracking devices on his tangle-fielder: a heat sensor, and recently the highest-speed motion sensor he could commission. No spotlights or radar; those didn't work to track the Night Fury. It had been tried, but this thing had an instinct for avoiding spotlights and…for some reason, it could slide right through radar without leaving a blip. The ballistic scream confused more than it clarified, only telling someone that it was coming. But if he aimed the tangle-fielder at the apex of the scream…if the motion sensor did what it was supposed to and caught the direction it was coming from…as long as the Night Fury didn't do any weird turns in the air, he would be able to find which direction it was going. And then…

The shriek picked up.

Hiccup aimed at the tallest thing in his immediate area, which was a surveyor's platform. If it came this way, it would aim for that. The heat sensor started flashing, slowly at first and then more rapidly. It wasn't displaying a dragon, exactly; more like a ball of fire that might have wings. That was the only look anyone had ever had of the Night Fury: what it looked like on a heat sensor right before it…

The surveyor's platform exploded.

The heat sensor fritzed out, but the motion sensor had collected enough information to provide a possible trajectory. Hiccup swung the fielder in the indicated direction and pulled the trigger. Then he fell off the tripod as the recoil kicked him in the chest. It always kicked him when he tried this; his weapon could shoot nets heavy enough to pin a Titan-Wing. At least he'd finally calibrated the tripod enough that the aim wasn't thrown off by the recoil.

A metal net spun into the sky, glinting in the light of the flames. Hiccup sprang to his feet and watched it fly expectantly, manually turning off the filters in his headset – if there was anything to hear, it would be pretty far off.

He didn't see anything…but he heard the familiar sound of cables hitting scales and the unfamiliar sound of a strange roar as its owner plunged into the forest. For a second, he couldn't grasp what happened. Then euphoria hit.

"Wh-I hit it? Yes, I hit it! Did anyone see that?" He looked around, as if hoping to find an audience watching in astonishment.

There was no one there – except for the Monstrous Nightmare that clambered over the cliff and obliterated his weapon by simply stomping on it.

Hiccup slumped as he turned around again. "Except for you," he groaned.

A panicked scream came over the General's headset. He turned away from the Broad-Wing Nadders he'd just netted and saw Hiccup on the run with a very large dragon snapping at his back; with a sigh, he stood up and started on an intercept course.

"Do not let them escape," he shouted over his shoulder.

The Monstrous Nightmare wasn't just snapping; it was breathing fire. Heavy, sticky fire that was almost volcanic, it stuck to everything. Hiccup took refuge behind one of the towers and fire surged around him; fortunately the tower was just wide enough that there was a safe zone his size.

He couldn't hear anything from the dragon. Had it gone away? He slowly leaned out, taking care not to touch the fire, and tried to see if it was safe to come out.

So intent was he on the direction he was going that he didn't notice the massive maw approaching from the other side until Stoik fired several rounds into the dragon's shoulder. Thwarted from its prey, the Nightmare roared defiantly at the general. It tried to breathe fire, but only got a tiny trickle of flame.

"You're all out," General Stoik informed it. Then he rushed, using his empty rifle as a club, and hit the dragon hard enough to make it give up on battle and rush into the sky.

_Oh, and there's one more thing you need to know…_

The sentry tower collapsed and the top came off, crashing into everything in its path. Hiccup, cringing with every soldier that had to leap out of the way, slowly drew his mouthpiece back down.

"Sorry…Dad."

The tower part crashed right through where the netted Nadders were being held down; the dragons, sensing imminent freedom, made a break for it and were out of sight in a flash. Nor were they the only dragons to fly away – just the only ones that weren't carrying anything. Short-Wings were carrying chickens, Broad-Wings were carrying sheep, and Titan-Wings were hauling yaks. And those were just the ones that had grabbed live food; some had talon-loads of inanimate produce.

Silence reigned in the camp as their departing animals made pathetic cries for help. No one needed to say a word; Hiccup could see just as well as they could whose fault this was. He almost wished that one of those dragons would fly back down and carry him away with the animals.

Finally, as if continuing a conversation that until that point had been telepathic, he spoke.

"Okay, but I hit a Night Fury."

Stoik grabbed his collar and started walking off with him.

"It's not like the last few times, Dad, I mean I really actually hit it! You guys were busy and I had a really clear shot…it went down just off of Raven Point, so we just need to get a search party and…"

Stoik evidently had wanted to have this dressing-down in private, and was frustrated that his own son was determined to talk it out early. He let go of Hiccup's shoulder, opened his visor, and barked out, "ATTENTION, PRIVATE!"

Hiccup straightened up and shut up, glancing around as if looking for someone to support his argument. No one did, of course, and no one would; they never did.

"Winter is almost here and I have an entire regiment to feed – which is hard enough to manage without these cursed dragons carrying off all of our food. And fighting them off is hard enough without you causing disasters every time you step outside! Why can't you follow the simplest of orders?"

Hiccup's hands came up in spite of themselves; despite years of understanding what "at attention" meant, he still tended to wave his hands around when trying to communicate a point. "I can't stop myself, sir! I see a dragon, and I have to just kill it, sir…it's…who I am, sir…" _That was lame._

Stoik rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You are many things, Hiccup," he sighed, "But a dragon killer is not one of them. Get back to the barracks." He looked over Hiccup's head. "Make sure he gets there; I have his mess to clean up."

Gobber's hand smacked lightly (for Gobber) into the back of Hiccup's head, and they started for the building.

Most of the fire brigade had shoved their visors up as Hiccup passed them. Ruffnut laughed at him while Tuffnut complimented his "performance" – which wasn't a good thing anyway, since he and his sister both liked it when things broke in the most dramatic way possible.

"I've never seen anyone mess up that badly. That helped!" Snotlout proclaimed, waving at the scene of the disaster.

Hiccup shrugged. "Thank you, thank you, I was trying, so…" Behind him, Gobber shoved Snotlout over by his helmet.

Fishlegs didn't have anything to say; if anything, he looked just a little bit sorry. They had been friends once, before he'd gotten so big. Hiccup tried to tell himself that the other boy was working subterfuge, trying to coax the other privates around to a more intellectual way of thinking so that they would better appreciate Hiccup; if that was the plan, it wasn't working very well.

Astrid was silent, too. No telling what she was thinking as she studied the helmet she'd taken off, but she seemed to be disappointed.


	2. Chapter 2

"I really did hit it..."

"Sure..."

"He never listens..."

"Well, it runs in the family..."

"And when he does it's always with this disappointed scowl, like somebody skimped on the meat in his sandwich." Hiccup turned on the porch, squared his shoulders (and flicked his mouthpiece back so that his words wouldn't accidentally be broadcast all over town), and deepened his voice to a barely passable imitation of General Stoik. "_Who's in charge of the rations? I'm demoting him, he brought me the wrong offspring! I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms! Extra guts-and-glory on the side! This here - this is a talking fishbone!_"

Gobber chuckled and shook his head. "Now, you're thinking about this all wrong. It's not so much what you look like, it's what's _inside_ that he can't stand."

Hiccup stared at Gobber, his expression asking louder than any words, _and that's supposed to make me feel better somehow?_ "Thank you for summing that up," he finally replied, turning toward the door.

"Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not."

Hiccup shrugged dejectedly. "I just want to be one of you guys." He pushed his way through the door.

Gobber sighed and turned around. He was due in the tactics hall.

It took about thirty seconds for Hiccup to get out the back door, unnoticed and without his headset, pad, regulation pistol, or anything else that could constitute as an electronic. All he had on him was a heavy-duty hunting knife and a printed map folded into a notebook.

He was going hunting.

* * *

><p>"Either we finish them or they finish us!" General Stoik boomed at his troops. "If we find the nest and destroy it, the dragons will leave; they'll find another home." He banged his fist on the table, right on a blurry spot on a large map. Somewhere within that poorly-charted area was the nest. "We're launching one more search before the ice sets in!"<p>

"Those ships never come back," a faceless man said from among the enlisted.

"We're soldiers - it's an occupational hazard. Now who's with me?"

The reaction was less than enthusiastic. And for good reason. That area was poorly charted, as near as anyone could tell, because the dragons all seemed to generate a kind of force field that neutralized every known area-scanning equipment. Their own dragon-training arena didn't show up very well on radar because of the captive dragons there. The more dragons were in an area, the bigger and denser the force field was as they reinforced each other. And although no one had seen it, the fact that dragons were still coming from this nest for raids no matter how many of them were killed suggested that there were a _lot_ of dragons.

Stoik could have simply drafted himself a unit. However, he maintained the peace within the village after a fashion by letting them at least think that following an order was their idea. He straightened his shoulders and played his trump card.

"All right: those who stay will look after Private Hiccup."

Suddenly he had so many volunteers.

"That's more like it."

Gobber scratched his chin and started to stand. "Well, I guess I'll be packing my undies."

The man's fascination with underwear was always a mystery to Stoik. "No, I need you to stay and train the new privates; see if any of them can be promoted in four weeks." He settled by his friend.

Gobber thudded back down. "Oh, perfect." Then he turned, as though something had just occurred to him. "And while I'm busy, Hiccup can cover the stall. Broken guns in need of repair, explosives to rewire, lots of time to himself, what could possibly go wrong?"

There were so many answers to that question that Stoik didn't know where to start - and that, he quickly saw, was the point. "What am I going to do with him, Gobber?"

"Put him in training with the others."

"Oh, I'm serious."

"So am I."

"He'd be killed before you let the first dragon out of its cage!"

"Oh, you don't know that..."

"Yes, I do..."

"No, you don't..."

"Yes, actually, I do..."

"No, you don't!"

"Listen," Stoik heaved himself to his feet again and started pacing, "You know what he's like. From the time he could crawl he's been...different. He never listens, he has the attention span of a sparrow...I take him fishing and he goes hunting for - for trolls!"

"Trolls exist!" Gobber proclaims, waving his mug - unwittingly revealing yet another oddity about him. "They steal your socks, but only the left ones; what's with that?"

"When I was a boy," Stoik began (ignoring Gobber's muttered, "Oh, here we go,"), "My father told me to bang my head against a rock and I did it! I thought it was crazy, but I didn't question it. And do you know what happened?" ("You got a headache.") "That rock split in two. That was when I knew what a soldier was capable of; even as a boy I knew what I was, what I had to become..." Stoik sat down again and finally voiced what sounded - to him - almost like a defeat. "Hiccup is not that boy."

"You can't stop him, Stoik; you can only prepare him." Gobber shrugged. "I know it seems hopeless, but the truth is, you won't always be around to protect him. He's going to get out there again. In fact, he's probably out there now."


	3. Chapter 3

_Raven Point, 0830 hours_

No matter how low the filters were set, it just didn't compare to hearing the early-morning forest sounds through nothing. Hiccup always found himself caught between disliking the headset (it was a little uncomfortable) and feeling a bit incomplete without it, swaying more one way or the other depending on whether he'd just put it on or taken it off. He'd gotten over this morning's "incomplete" status about an hour ago.

He double-checked his calculations, took a deep breath, and looked at the trees ahead. No dragon. He sighed and put another red "X" on the map...to join about fifty others. Finally he covered the map in angry red scrawls and put both it and his pen away. "If there's a God up there, he hates me," he sighed, his voice unaccountably loud in the stillness. He rubbed his ears, a nervous habit when he didn't have his headset on. "Most people lose their knife or their ammo, but no, not me, I manage to lose an entire dragon?" He smacked a low-hanging branch – which rebounded and smacked him in the face. Glaring up at the tree, he suddenly forgot his irritation when he noticed an interesting detail.

The tree had been almost completely sheared off its stump, clinging on by a few splinters. It was extended out along the side of a trench, almost like a giant arrow. Both the break and the trench looked recent.

Hiccup followed the trail curiously, not really _thinking_ anything in particular about what could have caused it. He hadn't heard anything about any construction being done out here, and anyway it was awfully sloppy if it was supposed to be something military-related. It looked more like some kind of crash site…

He crested a knoll and nearly had a heart attack. He dropped flat and gulped, and then slowly looked again. In the midst of the greens, browns, and soft grays of the early morning forest, there was a swath of black. It wasn't moving…he scrabbled for his hunting knife, and in his nervous state he considered it a good sign that he got it into his hands the right way around with no bloody mishaps. Now armed, he started his approach, scrambling to a rock and taking refuge behind it before finally coming into the open.

It really was a dragon. It had four strong legs, two long wings, and two small rough crests above its hips; with a shape like that it could have been either a Stoker or a Strike. Its scales were a uniform black, and very smooth and shiny. Its body was long and sleek – and smaller than he'd thought (Broad-Wing, not Titan-Wing, so about the size of a horse). No wonder it never showed up on radar: sound probably rolled right over that streamlined body. It didn't even have obvious claws.

"Oh wow," for a moment, Hiccup forgot himself. "I – I did it! Oh, I – this fixes everything! Yes!" He propped his foot up on a foreleg and struck a triumphant pose. "I have brought down this mighty beast!" Then he had to stagger backwards, his bravado gone, as the foreleg snapped out.

It was still alive!

He approached again, more cautiously and actually aiming his knife at it, and looked more carefully, this time at its face. It had a level bite, kind of like the Delta Tidal dragons; unlike those dragons (which were rather crocodile-faced), this dragon had a very broad and flat forehead and chin. Its nostrils were in front rather than on top, and its eyes were mostly on the sides. It could look at him out of one eye without even turning its head.

Which was exactly what it was doing.

Swallowing hard, Hiccup centered his aim on the dragon's chest. He couldn't keep from looking at that baleful, pale eye no matter how hard he tried, though. Only about three other dragons, one Gamma and two Betas, had eyes that big; and only the Alpha Strikes had them bigger.

Hiccup's breath started coming harder. "I'm going to kill you, dragon," he hissed, adjusting his grip on the knife. "And I'm going to…I'm going to cut your heart out and take it to my father…I'm a soldier…" as if the dragon had made some telepathic negative remark he turned and repeated directly to its face, "I'm a SOLDIER!"

The dragon rumbled and lifted its head a bit.

Two deep breaths later Hiccup held the knife over his head…then he made the mistake of peeking at the dragon's face again.

That…wasn't the flat and emotionless expression he saw in ordinary lizards' eyes. And it wasn't hate. That was…fear.

Something stirred in his chest…before he could put a name to it he shut his eyes and looked away, and readied his arms for the strike again. He tried to bring his knife down…and nothing happened. His whole body seemed to writhe in an attempt to bring that knife home, and his arms wouldn't cooperate. Finally with a sigh he let his shoulders and elbows buckle, making the hilt thunk on his head. He lowered his hands and looked the dragon over again.

It had dropped its head and closed its eyes, looking like it was waiting for death…death that, for all that he'd promised – threatened, even – Hiccup couldn't deliver. He had brought it out of the skies intending to kill it, and now that he had the dreaded Night Fury at his mercy, he found that he couldn't end its life.

"I did this." He turned and started to leave, to put this horrible act behind him. Then he looked back. That net was intended to hold Titan-Wing dragons for a few minutes, which meant that wrapped up as it was a mere Broad-Wing couldn't get free, even if it was a Night Fury. It would die on its own, unable to catch food or escape some other predator. The thought…Hiccup wouldn't admit it to anyone else, ever, but the thought made him sick.

No creature, not even a terrifying predator like a dragon, should have to die slowly like that.

Before Hiccup could stop and think about whether it was a good idea, he had gone back to the dragon and started slicing through the net. Perhaps he was less on edge because the Night Fury seemed to have no claws; perhaps he thought it was exhausted from trying to fight free during the hours it had taken anyone to find it. Perhaps he thought it would be grateful at being released.

Dragons are _never_ grateful.

The moment the net fell slack, the dragon sprang out and knocked Hiccup against the rock with such force that the knife skittered out of his hand. In an instant the tables were turned, and Hiccup was at the mercy of the dreaded Night Fury.

Those dragon eyes really were big – and merciless, as they glared through his human eyes to scour the mind and soul beyond. They left no doubt that not only could the Night Fury kill one tiny human, it _would_.

Real thought became something of a remote concept as terror threatened to smother Hiccup. The only idea he had (a general-purpose _escape!_) was proving pretty useless even before the claws slid out of those seemingly harmless dragon paws and pressed into the tender flesh on and around his neck. He wished he'd brought his gun; he wished he'd brought a communicator; heck, if nothing else he wished he'd brought a camera so that anyone finding his remains would see what had killed him. Why had he been so determined to leave all his electronics at home, anyway? Thinking back on it now, it seemed like a really stupid idea.

The dragon lifted slightly, its wings spreading to block out the sky. A deep breath echoed in its big chest.

_This is it…_

He couldn't look.

He couldn't _not_ look.

Suddenly the world was torn apart by a shriek. It reverberated all the way to his heel bones, burning into his brain, driving everything that even vaguely resembled thought right out of his head. He couldn't even breathe until the sound stopped.

By the time Hiccup registered that he had just heard the cry of the Night Fury, the dragon had spun on its paws and vaulted away, crashing into a cliff as it tried to fly in the confines of the forest. He struggled to get some fresh air into his lungs, his hand pressed hard to his chest as though expecting his heart to burst out. A moment later, feeling a little bit better, he picked up his knife and got unsteadily to his feet. His ears were ringing, their balance systems completely scrambled; the forest seemed very quiet now, and rocking like a ship in a storm.

_I…should…have…brought…my…headset._ He would be remembering that roar for the rest of his life, hearing it in his nightmares probably.

He turned and started on the walk back home. He only got about three slow steps before his knife slipped from nerveless fingers and his legs turned to rubber, and darkness crashed over his mind to lay him low.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a good three hours before he woke up; another two for him to get back to camp. In short, Hiccup didn't get back to his bunker until the sun was going down.

The first thing he saw when he cracked the door open (much to his rather heart-sinking surprise) was his father, fussing with a plasma rifle. He'd thought – hoped, really – that Stoik would still be at the tactics room. He didn't seem to have noticed Hiccup…the boy slipped in and closed the door as quietly as he could. Then he slinked up the stairs, adding speed to his silence…

"Hiccup."

"Dad!" Hiccup froze on the stairs. Then he turned to face the man he wasn't ready to talk to. "I, uh…I have to talk with you."

Stoik approached. "I need to speak with you, too." Whatever he was planning to say, it was something he evidently had never said before; he took a deep breath, bracing himself. Well, probably no one had ever admitted what Hiccup was about to say; he gathered his courage and straightened his back.

Then both spoke at once.

"It's time for you to learn to fight dragons. What?"

"I've decided I don't want to fight dragons. What?"

Stoik fidgeted with his fingers. "You first."

"No, no…" superior rank had first call, "You first."

"All right," Stoik looked at the wall, readying himself again. Then he looked up. "You get your wish. Dragon training. You start in the morning."

"Oh man, I should have gone first…" Hiccup struggled to swallow down the panic that lifted in his chest, and tried to find a fitting argument. "We have a surplus of dragon-fighting soldiers…but do we have enough…ration-making soldiers, or bunker-repair soldiers…"

Stoik wasn't hearing it. He took that plasma rifle and dropped the whole thing in Hiccup's skinny arms, making him stagger. "You'll need this."

_Just say it._ "I don't want to fight dragons."

Stoik laughed. "Come on, yes you do."

"Rephrase…" Hiccup wobbled down the stairs. Maybe his dad will stop taking this insane idea seriously if he's reminded how small his son is. "Dad, _I can't kill dragons_."

"No, but you _will_ kill dragons."

Oh, he misunderstood that? "No, I'm actually really very sure that I won't." His shoulders shifted as he tried to gesture in time with his words and the rifle wobbled dangerously. Was it loaded? If he dropped it, would it go off?

"It's time, Hiccup."

"Can you not hear me when I don't have…?"

"This is serious." Stoik took the rifle back for a moment (to Hiccup's extremely short-lived relief; it was coming right back, and he knew it) and held it up. "When you carry this rifle, you carry all of us with you." Sure enough, he put the rifle back in Hiccup's hands. Then he tugged the boy into something more nearly resembling armed attention. "That means you walk like us; you talk like us; you think like us. And no more of…" his hands roved up and down as he looked for where to start, and then simply gestured, "…This."

The rifle slid nearly to the floor as Hiccup's stance slumped. "You just gestured at all of me."

"Deal?"

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided…"

"_Deal?_" he repeated, louder.

Hiccup sighed. There was just…no giving his father any answer except the one he wanted, at times like this. "Deal," he replied, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

Stoik picked up a field pack. "Good. Train hard…I'll be back." He put his helmet on, glancing back for one last parting word before closing the visor, "Probably."

"And I'll be here," Hiccup called after his father's back, "Maybe." He glumly considered the rifle in his hands. If he tried to fire it, it would probably break his shoulder without even hitting the target – and, knowing his luck, it would kill or injure someone on his own side. _Seriously, I'm never loading this thing. It's a melee weapon._

"_When you carry this rifle, you carry all of us with you…"_

It was way too heavy.

* * *

><p><em>0900 hours, training grounds<em>

"Welcome to dragon training!" Gobber shouted as he opened the door.

Astrid marched through the door first. "No turning back," she said, partly to herself and partly to the other students. This was the opportunity that she – that all of them – had been waiting for all their lives.

They could see why it was called a ring; it was a round room, the curve of the walls only disturbed by doors leading to dragon pens. Walls and floor were made of concrete, thick enough that the hardest-headed dragons wouldn't be able to ram their way through. A steel cage dome of bars and chains covered the top, preventing dragons from flying out. Shields were scattered over the floor.

"I hope I get some serious burns!" Tuffnut growled with relish.

"I'm hoping for some mauling," Ruffnut tossed back, sounding almost thoughtful, "Like my shoulder or lower back."

Those twins had problems.

"Yeah, it's only fun if you get a scar out of it," Astrid drawled, leaving it open to question whether she was being sarcastic or serious.

"Yeah, no kidding, right?" a mopey voice behind them made all of them turn to look. There was Hiccup, barely holding his rifle and looking like he would rather be anywhere but in that ring with combat armor on. "Pain…love it."

Tuffnut sulked and slouched. "Great, who let him in?"

Gobber stepped up behind Hiccup. "Let's get started! The student who does best not only will get a promotion, but also have the honor of killing his first Broad-Wing dragon in front of the entire squadron." He wrenched his prosthetic claw like he was breaking necks, for emphasis.

"Hiccup already killed a Night Fury, so…does that disqualify him?" Snotlout asked, getting the twins to laugh outright and making Fishlegs grin apologetically. Then he turned away and asked – nobody in particular from that angle, "Can I get transferred to the class with the cool privates?"

Gobber thumped Hiccup's shoulder as he led the boy up to the others. "Ah, don't worry; you're small and weak, and that'll make you less of a target. They'll see you as sick or insane and go after the more soldier-like teens instead." Ignoring the expression Hiccup gave – and his slight confusion as he was shoved practically right into Fishlegs and had to reorganize his at-attention – he stepped in front of his line of soldiers and started a very simple speech. "Behind these doors are just a few of the dragons you will be learning to fight." He started gesturing at the doors. "The Deadly Nadder…"

"Speed eight, armor sixteen…" Fishlegs responded under his breath – reminding Hiccup that there was another nerd in the room.

"The Hideous Zippleback…"

"Eleven stealth…"

"The Monstrous Nightmare…"

"Firepower fifteen…"

"The Terrible Terror…"

"Attack eight, venom twelve…"

"WILL YOU STOP THAT?" Gobber regained his composure. "And…" he took hold of a lever next to one of the doors, "…The Gronkle."

Fishlegs leaned slightly towards Hiccup and whispered, "Jaw strength eight…"

Suddenly alarm suffused Snotlout's features. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, aren't you going to teach us first?"

"I believe in learning on the job." Gobber pulled the lever down. Two seconds later, the door exploded outwards and a dragon with small wings and big legs rushed out, its heavy lower jaw dropping to show them all a mouthful of teeth. Everyone broke ranks and scattered as Gobber shouted over their communicators, "Lesson one is about survival, because if you get blasted, you're dead!"

Gronkles weren't exactly graceful in flight – which was how it left its pen. It crashed into the wall as someone it was chasing dodged, and it had to take a couple seconds to get back up. Flames and smoke started leaking out the upturned back corners of its mouth.

"Quick, what's the first thing you'll need?" Gobber shouted.

"A medic?" Hiccup yelped.

"Plus-five speed?" Fishlegs asked.

"A shield!" Astrid shouted.

"Shield, go!"

Everyone dove after the shields as Gobber continued. "A shield is the most important piece of equipment you have!" He went over to Hiccup, who was having trouble lifting his shield, and gave the boy some rough help. "If you have to make a choice between a weapon and a shield, take the shield!"

The twins grabbed the exact same shield and began quarreling over it. As always happened when they fought, they got so focused on each other that they didn't notice the Gronkle flying towards them until it obliterated their shield with a burst of flame like lava. The force of the impact knocked both of them all the way around before they dropped to the ground.

"Ruffnut, Tuffnut, out," Gobber called. Ignoring their confused queries, he shouted at the rest of the class, "Those shields are good for another thing: noise. Make lots of it – the clash of metal on metal is the only thing to disorient every known dragon!"

Everyone still standing readjusted their grips on their rifles and started banging their shields – with varying degrees of success depending on the individual's strength and their ability to handle a weapon and shield simultaneously – as they rushed around the Gronkle. Sure enough, the dragon spun unsteadily in the air and drifted randomly in the direction of the quietest noise – which was Hiccup. He ran for cover.

"Every dragon has a limited number of shots," Gobber added. "How many does a Gronkle have?"

Snotlout shrugged, "Five?"

Fishlegs waved his shield in the air, "No, six!"

"Correct; that's one for each of you." Another lava burst knocked Fishlegs's shield away and Gobber added, "Fishlegs, out."

Fishlegs ran for the door with a girlish little squeal.

"Hiccup, get in there!"

Hiccup started to edge back out from behind the barricade he'd found – only to immediately retreat again when a lava ball struck the wall right next to him. He'd wait until the dragon got distracted, thank you.

Snotlout sidled up to Astrid. "So, I moved into my parents' basement," he began suggestively, "You should come over some time to work out…you look like you work out," he added at her retreating back. It didn't occur to him just _why_ she was running again until another fireball hit his shield.

"Snotlout, you're done!"

Astrid ended up next to Hiccup, who at least had enough sense to make a class-related comment instead of a flirt. "So, uh…I guess it's just you and me, huh?" He was expecting her to ignore him; she looked pretty focused. So he was surprised that she answered.

"Nope, just you," and that was her exit line as she veered and the Gronkle blasted Hiccup's shield away. His rifle clattered to the ground and went off.

Gobber's voice came again, "One shot left…"

Hiccup ran after his shield. He wasn't thinking all that rationally by then; he'd been startled by the explosion from his weapon (his father _had_ loaded it, because he hadn't done any such thing). He'd had the safety on, just in case – he thought – had all the banging turned it off? Surely his father wouldn't have given him a weapon with a faulty safety…

"HICCUP!"

Hiccup's feet stuttered to a stop as he looked around to see what Gobber was warning him about – and in the next instant he found himself backed to the wall with a Gronkle breathing asthmatically in his face. It was very hot, and it reeked. He shut his eyes and turned away, waiting for the end to strike.

Gobber snagged the Gronkle's jaw with his hook and wrenched it to the side, causing the fireball to explode against the wall and startling Hiccup into recoiling. "And that's six…go back to bed, you overgrown sausage…you'll get another chance, don't you worry." The heavy doors slammed shut on the Gronkle, and peace returned to the atmosphere.

The other students lined up, the picture of exhaustion rather than perfect attention. Astrid was closest, although she was favoring her right leg a bit – Hiccup squinted. On her right boot was a crease that looked like something with a lot of heat and force had near-missed or ricocheted as she was running away. But…she never turned her back on an enemy…

_Friendly fire._ Hiccup winced. When his rifle went off, it must have scorched her foot; good thing she was wearing those reinforced boots, or she would have taken real damage. She wouldn't blame him for that, would she? _Knowing my luck, probably._

Gobber's voice interrupted further thoughts. "Remember, a dragon will always…" he turned and bent down, essentially saying the rest straight to Hiccup, "_Always_…go for the kill." His head jerked up to the smoking crater in the wall for emphasis before he grabbed Hiccup's shoulder and hauled him back to his feet.

Hiccup looked at the crater, his brow furrowing. He was remembering another dragon that had loomed over him with murder in its eyes.

* * *

><p><em>1200 hours, Raven Point<em>

"So why didn't you?" Hiccup mused, holding the remains of the tangle net.

He hadn't done anything to prevent the Night Fury from blasting him; he _couldn't_ do anything. He'd had no guns, he'd dropped his knife, and he was way too small to fight off a Broad-Wing dragon with his bare hands. It had stopped itself – but why?

Putting the net down, he hiked in the direction he'd seen the Night Fury fly. He had his camera this time; he wanted a photo record of this dragon. Also, although it was turned off and hanging around his neck at the moment, he had his headset with him.

_If it rushes at me and roars like that again, I want to be able to block the worst of it out._

Eventually he found himself looking down from the mouth of a tunnel into a cove. It looked like a giant misshapen bowl, with a dark puddle in the bottom that was being fed by a waterfall. Trees grew around the sides. It was pretty…

It was wide open. The Night Fury had probably long since flown off.

"Well, this was stupid," Hiccup sighed. Then he noticed something. Small black discs were on the ground by his feet; they looked like they could be Night Fury scales. He picked one up.

It was a dragon scale. Smooth, dry, curved edges – and very strong, although it was brittle enough that if Hiccup had enough strength in his hands, he could probably break it. And no other dragon had black scales, at least not as big as this…

Suddenly a massive shadow rushed up past Hiccup, startling him into the darkness of the tunnel. The shadow scrabbled frantically at the wall, wings beating with an air of desperation, before it swept back down to half-glide, half-crash back into the cove.

_The Night Fury – it's still here!_ Hardly believing his luck, Hiccup stepped out of the tunnel and onto an outcropping for a better look. For a long moment he just watched in fascination as it tried repeatedly to take flight, only to list sharply and fall back down. His eyebrows crunched together as he watched. The Night Fury was sleek, with giant wings and powerful launching muscles. It had flown before, and flown fast…

"Why don't you just…fly away?" Hiccup breathed. Then he remembered one of his camera's features: if he took enough pictures of the same subject, it could assemble those pictures into a 3D-graphic and analyze the subject for structural flaws. He got the camera out and took aim.

_Click. Click. Click. Click._

Over and over he captured the Night Fury as it rose up, hovered, fell down, and at one point spat a plasma-type fire burst in what looked like frustration. Once he was sure he had as many angles and positions as he could get from here without actually asking the dragon to pose for him, he set it to assemble and analyze.

The Night Fury's attention was suddenly riveted on the lake; something had splashed. Hiccup watched with bated breath as it crept up on the water and tried to catch something. Its mouth was still empty when it sat back, however. The fish were too fast, and probably this dragon wasn't a very good fisher – at least, if it was the exact opposite of the Delta dragons, it wasn't a good fisher. No doubt it mostly ate land-walking meat. If it was after fish, it was probably desperate.

_Poor thing…_

Suddenly his camera made a noise, a musical chime indicating that it had finished its task. Startled, he looked at the display. There was the Night Fury in all its digitally-mapped glory, its wings outstretched; red was flashing at the end of its tail, on the wing-like membranes there…according to the structural analysis, there were supposed to be _two_ wings at the end of the tail. The port-side tail wing was gone.

_Dragons must be like birds; or at least, this particular dragon is. They need their tails to steer and stay in control in flight._ He looked back down at the Night Fury, feeling even sorrier for it – and suddenly realized that it was staring up at him. It must have heard his camera.

For another long moment they stared at each other. Strangely, there was no hostility; did it recognize him as the boy who had freed it?


	5. Chapter 5

_Mess hall, 1730 hours_

It started raining long before Hiccup got back; when he slipped silently through the door, he was soaked through. His classmates were eating their dinners and getting their performances dissected by Gobber.

"Where did Astrid go wrong?"

Astrid answered before anyone else could. "I mistimed my somersault dive; it was sloppy, and it threw off my reverse tumble."

Ruffnut muttered something that sounded like, "Yeah, we noticed."

Snotlout immediately jumped to Astrid's defense. "No, no, that was good – it was so Astrid!"

"She's right," Gobber told him, "You have to be tough on yourself." He nodded briefly at Hiccup as the boy collected his plate. "Now, where did Hiccup go wrong?"

Snotlout edged back and forth on the bench with a smirk, very effectively walling Hiccup away from their table; Hiccup ignored him and went to an empty table.

"Uh, he showed up?" Ruffnut asked.

"He didn't get eaten?" Tuffnut added.

"He's never where he should be," Astrid said more definitely, casting a look at Hiccup that he didn't even see. She couldn't reasonably blame him for hitting her, but she was blaming him for dropping his rifle. Unprofessional…and it was going to come out of her monetary rations to patch that boot.

"Thank you, Astrid." Gobber sounded slightly sarcastic, although that seemed to be more aimed at the twins for their highly non-constructive criticism. "A soldier needs to live and breathe this stuff." He held up a bundle of files. "The dragon profiles; everything we know about every dragon we know of." He glanced up as a rumble of thunder sounded over the building. "No attacks tonight; study up." He left the files on the table and walked away.

Tuffnut dropped his knife. "Wait – you mean read?"

"While we're still alive?" Ruffnut added.

"Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you stuff about?" Snotlout demanded, banging his plate.

"Oh, I've read it seven times," Fishlegs exclaimed, his excitement nearly tangible. "There's this water dragon that sprays boiling water at your face, and then there's this other dragon that…"

Tuffnut held up a hand, moving his fingers in a "close-your-mouth" gesture. "Yeah, great, there was even a chance I might read those…"

Snotlout stood up and put his helmet back on. "You guys read; I'll go kill stuff." He left with the twins chasing him and mobbing each other, and Fishlegs followed all three of them while trying to tell them about a tunneling dragon.

Hiccup approached Astrid and the files cautiously but with curiosity. "So…uh…I guess we'll share…"

Astrid pushed the files towards him without even looking and stood up. "I've read 'em already," she replied dismissively, her attitude making it unclear whether she really had or just was using any convenient excuse to _not_ sit and read with Hiccup.

"Oh, uh, so it's all mine then, wow…okay then, I'll just see you, uh…" Hiccup looked up just as the mess door slammed shut. All his classmates had left him alone. "…Tomorrow." He sighed and wished for a miracle to occur where he suddenly got another foot taller and at least a hundred pounds of raw muscle heavier. _Nobody_ took him seriously at this size.

* * *

><p><em>2300 hours<em>

Hiccup set up a reading lamp and drew the files closer. They were gathered by classification; they were classified largely by element. Some dragons fit into multiple classes based on how their elements interacted. The dragon on top when he opened the Tidal class file wasn't one of those. "Scauldron; fills itself with water, which it then heats to the boiling point and expels as a defense mechanism. Attacks fishing boats; extremely dangerous, find and kill."

He turned the page. "Changewing…is completely undetectable without the use of heat and motion sensors. Secondary class is Tracker, and can follow the scent of its own venom for miles; extremely dangerous, find and kill."

Another page. "Whispering Death; secondary class Boulder, dwells in sea caves and underground tunnels. Breathes rings of fire…extremely dangerous…"

A crash of thunder practically right on top of the building startled Hiccup. Really, he shouldn't be reading these in the middle of a stormy night; how did he ever think he was going to sleep? Still, feeling like an absolute idiot, he kept going – although he did push the Tidal file aside and opened the Tracker file.

"Nadder…Zippleback…Snaptrapper…Rumblehorn…Boneknapper…" None of these guys looked anything like the dragon in the cove; all had wings that were too big. Next file.

"Gronkle…Snafflefang…Speed Stinger…Sand Wraith…" Again, no resemblance; these Boulder-class baddies didn't have enough wing. Next.

"Monstrous Nightmare…Hobblegrunt…Fireworm…" Stoker seemed to be a lot closer. The specific profile he was looking for wasn't there, though…he flipped quickly through the Mystery-class file and, not finding anything of note other than the Smothering Smokebreath, grabbed the Strike-class file. "Skrill…Flightmare…"

The last page was empty but for the heading and a few lines.

"Night Fury: speed and size, unknown. Breath weapon appears to be highly pressurized plasma bursts. Never engage this dragon – remain under cover." Someone had scrawled in red letters under the text, "The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself."

Hiccup pulled out his pad and called up the graphic of the black dragon. This dragon…couldn't be anything other than a Night Fury, but…whatever wise guy had written those words, it just didn't match.

* * *

><p><em>Hell's Gate, 0700 hours<em>

"I can almost smell them…" Stoik muttered, glaring at the uncharted section on the map. "They're close."

The massive fog that was Hell's Gate most certainly wasn't natural; no one had ever been known to reach its heart (or if they did, they never returned to tell of it), so no one knew what was causing it. Safest bet was the dragons, of course – however they were scrambling the tracking equipment, it made sense that the effect would be rubbed off on the place where they gathered and make an ever-strengthening shelter.

Of course, that also meant that the closer _they_ got to the nest, the less reliable their navigating tech was. They always were reduced to low levels of technology very soon after entering the fog.

Stoik looked out the window at the wall of white. Then he barked, "Take us in."

Orders were relayed, and all three ships turned to sail into the unknown. They were battle-hardened soldiers, men of the sea; ready for anything and everything, even dragons.

Dragons found them not thirty seconds after they entered.

* * *

><p><em>Training Arena, 1000 hours<em>

"Hey, uh, so I noticed the files had nothing on Night Furies," Hiccup said cautiously. "Is there another file, like a sequel…maybe some Night Fury pamphlet…" a stream of fire interrupted him, and he stared in surprise at the half-melted butt of his rifle – he'd taken care to unload it that morning, and had been holding it like a melee weapon.

"Focus, Hiccup!" Gobber's voice bellowed over his communicator as a Deadly Nadder came springing around the corner. "You're not even trying!"

Hiccup took off running through the labyrinth that had been erected. For the most part the massive-winged Nadder wasn't bothering to use the corridors, instead hopping around on top of the barriers like a trained parrot.

"Today is all about _attack!_" Gobber continued. "Nadders are quick and light on their feet. Your job is to be quicker and lighter."

Fishlegs screamed as the Nadder fired a volley of spikes from its tail into his shield. "I'm really beginning to question your teaching methods, Sir!"

Gobber ignored that. "Look for its blind spot; every dragon has one, and no dragon will spit fire at a target it can't see. Find it, hide in it, and strike!"

Ruffnut and Tuffnut rounded a corner and found themselves right in front of the Nadder's large, quivering nostrils. They stood very still for a moment, waiting; the Nadder clucked in a way that almost sounded confused, and its head twitched. Evidently its nose was a bit too wide for its medium-small eyes to see around. It knew they were there: its sense of smell was excellent. But it couldn't see them.

As Ruff and Tuff bobbed back and forth with the Nadder to stay in its blind spot, Ruffnut – pressed against her brother's back – took a deep sniff and grunted her disgust. "Do you ever bathe?"

Tuffnut rolled his shoulders – hitting Ruffnut – and retorted, "If you don't like it, get your own blind spot!" That started a shoving match, and for the second day in a row the dragon was forgotten in favor of their personal rivalry.

"How about I give you one?"

Before Tuffnut could say anything else, both twins noticed that the Nadder had located them and was preparing another fire blast. They scrambled clear, Ruff dragging Tuff.

"Blind spot, yes; deaf spot, not so much," Gobber chuckled. He was clearly enjoying the show from the bleachers.

Hiccup skittered to a stop under Gobber's seat. "So, uh, how would one sneak up on a Night Fury?"

"No one's ever met one and lived to tell the tale, now GET IN THERE!"

"I know, I know, but hypothetically…"

The second interruption came, not from the Nadder, but from Astrid. It wasn't much more than a whisper over his communicator, but the message was plain enough: "Hiccup, get down!"

Astrid, Snotlout, and (now that his attention had been drawn to the searching Nadder) Hiccup all took shelter low behind the walls. Astrid signaled again, this time for a roll to get past the Nadder's corridor quickly. She and Snotlout cleared the area with no trouble, using their shields as platforms. Hiccup realized that he lacked the strength to complete the maneuver with his shield and that he would be better off just crouching low and running; unfortunately, he realized that _by actually failing_ to complete the maneuver, and the Nadder spotted him. He switched to a scrambling run and bolted for new cover with the dragon's jaws crashing shut right behind his posterior.

The next people cornered by the Nadder were Astrid and Snotlout. Astrid took aim with her rifle, only to be shoved out of the way by Snotlout.

"Watch out, babe, I can handle this," he said casually, hoisting his rifle with one arm and pulling the trigger.

All the rounds lobbed into the wall practically right next to the dragon's head as it jerked slightly away from the noise and watched. Then the Nadder looked at Snotlout, the spiky frill on its head flaring as it made a clucking noise that was suspiciously – and insultingly – like a chuckle or chortle. Was it actually _laughing_ at him?

Snotlout wilted slightly under Astrid's glare before he protested, "The sun was in my eyes, Astrid." Then both had to run as the Nadder spouted fire after them, and he went on, "What do you want me to do, block out the sun? I can do that, but I don't really have time right now…"

Astrid ignored him, veering wildly to avoid Hiccup (who was asking about Night Furies again) and causing the dragon to start knocking the labyrinth over. She started shooting over her shoulder at the Nadder, trying to startle, stun or cripple it before it trampled her.

"Maybe it takes the day off, you know, like a cat…" Hiccup really wasn't registering the fact that his classmates were speeding past him. "Has anyone ever caught one napping?"

"_Hiccup!_" Gobber shouted, pointing at the falling walls.

Hiccup backtracked, but not fast enough _and_ wound up tripping over his own feet as Astrid tumbled from the top of the last wall with her rifle flying out of her hands.

"HICCUP!" it was unclear if Astrid's scream was a warning, a cry for help, or simply a "get-out-of-the-way," but in any case she wound up sprawled on top of him with her legs tangled in his and her arms caught in the straps of his rifle and shield.

"Ooh, love on the battlefield!" Tuffnut mocked from the sidelines as the dragon overshot them to crash into a pile of fallen barricades.

"She can do better," Ruffnut sneered as Astrid ignored Hiccup's half-formed suggestions and freed herself from the tangle.

The Nadder emerged from the pile with a squawk that would have been ear-splitting if anyone hadn't had their headsets on.

Astrid took one look at the situation and realized that she was the most obvious target: everyone else was either on the sidelines or on the ground. Her own weapon was nowhere to be seen in the mess; she grabbed Hiccup's rifle (ignoring his strangled cries of discomfort), discovered that it wouldn't fire, and wrenched it off of him altogether to swing it like a club.

She was way better at melee fighting than Hiccup was; adrenaline no doubt helped, too. The rifle hit the Nadder's face so hard that the weakened butt shattered, and the dragon staggered away with clucks of distress.

"Well done, Astrid," Gobber called.

Astrid struggled to get her breath back; she'd been badly frightened. Then fear gave way to anger and she pulled her helmet off to open verbal fire on the one person most likely to have seen her fear: Hiccup, who was cowering on the ground.

"Is this some kind of a joke to you? Our parents' war is about to become ours; figure out which side you're on." She threw the rifle barrel on the ground next to him and went stalking off to find where her own rifle had gone.

Hiccup looked dejectedly at what was left of his gun. If that wasn't symbolic, he didn't know what was: the rifle with which he was supposed to carry the entire squadron was now a melted, splintered piece of metal, far beyond repair.


	6. Chapter 6

_Secret Cove, 1500 hours_

Hiccup edged his way to the mouth of the cove, peering carefully over the top of his shield. The dragon was nowhere to be seen, but it couldn't fly out so it was definitely still there somewhere.

This wasn't one of his smarter ideas. Who had ever _befriended_ a dragon before? How did he know the dragon wouldn't decide it would rather eat _him_ than the fish he'd brought? Or, even if it did eat the fish, how did he know it wouldn't then turn him to ash?

In a way, he didn't care anymore. Gobber was busy; Fishlegs was hardly ever around anymore; nobody else cared. In fact, with the possible exceptions of Fishlegs, Gobber, and – outside chance – his dad, everyone else would be glad if he disappeared.

Still…he tossed the fish inside first and waited to see if it was greeted by fire or raging claws and teeth. Maybe everyone else would rather he died, but he tended to value life.

Maybe that was why he was here. He didn't want a dragon to die slowly, and he couldn't kill it, so he was keeping it alive.

All was quiet out there. He started forwards, forgetting to check the width of the shield against the width of the opening.

_Thunk._

The shield came to a stop, and all the tugging (first from the outside, and then from the inside after Hiccup ducked under it) couldn't dislodge it.

_Great: I'm walking into a great big cove with a horse-sized hungry dragon, I have no firearms and I'm now shieldless. I should have left a suicide note somewhere._

Hiccup carefully picked the fish back up and started walking slowly around the cove. All the while he glanced slowly around in search of the dragon; he didn't want it taking him by surprise. If he was startled, his reaction might startle it – and who knew what would happen then?

It was watching him, he was sure of it; he could feel its eyes. But he couldn't see…

Wait. Was that movement?

Hiccup slowly turned. When he saw the Night Fury looming up on top of a boulder, he gasped slightly and clutched the fish to his chest. _Come on, you knew it was here somewhere._ That didn't calm his heart much.

The dragon slipped off the rock, gracefully as a cat, and sniffed in his direction. He had its attention, at any rate; it was curious.

Hiccup didn't want to approach the dragon and scare it (besides which, _he_ was too scared), nor did he want to throw the fish again and risk fire. He held the fish out at arm's length with one hand.

The dragon, it seemed, didn't want to get any closer to him than he did to it. It sidled up slowly and lowered its head, intending to take the fish from the end Hiccup wasn't holding. Then, right as it was about to take a nibble, its attention refocused and it backtracked with a growl.

_Aagh – my knife; it can recognize a weapon when it sees one, I guess._ Hiccup clutched the fish to his chest again and slowly reached for his knife.

The dragon growled again, shifting its position to a ready-for-action stance. One wrong move and Hiccup was toast, fish or no fish.

Praying frantically to whatever deity might be listening, Hiccup changed his angle and took the knife out of its sheath by the very top of the hilt with his thumb and forefinger. It took a little doing – the knife and sheath were designed to hang onto each other a bit, so that the blade wouldn't fall out by accident. And then, when the knife did come, he lost his fragile grip on the hilt and it tumbled to the ground by his foot.

The dragon rumbled and shook its head. It either wasn't impressed with this act of surrender, or – if it was more intelligent than anyone thought – it was telling him to throw the knife farther away.

No way was Hiccup bending down in the presence of a Night Fury; he got the knife up onto his foot and threw it away with a kick, taking care to _not_ aim at the dragon. He winced as it splashed into the shallows of the lake; he'd have to clean it now.

The dragon watched the knife. Then it turned to stare at him again, back to its previous curious attitude – no, not quite. Its pupils hadn't been that wide before, nor had its ears flared like that. It was like he'd surprised it by throwing away his only weapon.

With a deep, deep breath, Hiccup held the fish out with _both_ hands. The dragon would have to keep its head up to take the fish now – which meant that it was angled much better to shoot him in the face if it thought he was a threat. He'd never taken his headset off after class, though the mouthpiece was folded up now, so at least he wouldn't be deafened again no matter what happened.

_Once was enough._

The dragon hesitated for just a moment longer. Then it started sidling again, reaching with its neck until its nose was just a couple inches away from the fish. Its mouth was open, revealing…

"Huh…you're toothless?" Hiccup asked softly, getting a flicker in the dragon's eyes and ears. It was the first thing he'd really said _to it_. "I could have sworn you had…"

It seemed that the Night Fury's teeth were retractable, just like its claws. In a flash the two curving rows of identical, triangular teeth popped out of the gums, and the dragon's head snapped forward to snatch the fish from his hands. Hiccup jerked back in spite of himself – that had been so close he thought for sure he was going to lose his hands – but the dragon didn't notice, being too busy pounding the fish in its jaws until it was soft enough to swallow whole.

"…Teeth…" Hiccup gasped, feeling paralyzed.

The dragon licked its lips and focused on him again. Then it started towards him, its gaze so intense that Hiccup started backing up.

"Uh…" Hiccup's feet caught on each other and he fell down, and he switched to crab-walking. "No, no, no…" his back thudded into a smaller rock as the dragon got right into his face. "I-I don't have any more!"

The dragon's eyes rolled peculiarly and its throat started vibrating. It made a strange choking, gagging noise – and suddenly half of the fish was in Hiccup's lap. Ignoring his groan of disgust, it sat back and stared at him.

Hiccup struggled to a proper sitting position and took the fish half in his hands. _Now what?_ With a growing sense of awkwardness he glanced around the cove. This would certainly qualify as one of his weirder afternoons, he could give it that.

Finally the dragon seemed to grasp that Hiccup had no idea what was going on. It looked at the fish, then back at Hiccup.

Hiccup looked at the fish himself – and then he realized what the dragon wanted him to do. _Oh, boy…_ he sighed and grimaced. _The things I do for survival._ He didn't know if the Night Fury would attack him if he refused the food gift, and he didn't want to find out. Maybe he could bluff through this, because he didn't want to taste any part of a raw fish that had just been in a dragon's stomach.

At least it was the tail end of the fish and not the part with the head; he'd never be able to cope with a creature's dead gaze fixed on him. Not letting himself think too hard about what he was about to do, he lifted the cold meat to his teeth and dug a bite out of it (taking care to keep his tongue away from it). He made noises like he liked it – at least, he hoped the dragon would translate the noises in that fashion – and offered the fish back.

The dragon's gaze never wavered, although its ears had twitched, and it gulped…rather pointedly, Hiccup thought. It could tell he hadn't swallowed.

_Oh, come on – how smart is this thing for real?_ Crazy smart, evidently: he didn't get to bluff. He worked the bite around in his mouth and tried to force it down. At first it wouldn't go: his throat rebelled. Fortunately he managed to block his mouth with his fist before he could cough up the disgusting object. _Come on, down…down the hatch…_ The second attempt worked, sending shivers down his body as he registered the taste and texture of raw and very cold fish. _That…was so gross._

The dragon – smacked its lips, Hiccup supposed was the best way to describe that expression; like it was asking him if he'd liked the fish.

_Please let the bluff work this time…_

Hiccup wasn't up to mimicking those _that was delicious_ noises he'd tried to use before; he pulled his face into a pained grin instead.

The dragon made a peculiar expression at him, as if asking, _what are you doing with your face?_ Then, slowly, the corners of its mouth started tugging up one side at a time, exposing the harmless gums…

Hiccup's eyebrows lifted as he suddenly realized that the Night Fury was working its face into a friendly grin of its own – something it had never done before, clearly, or the process wouldn't look so awkward.

_He's toothless when he's friendly…_ he'd read somewhere once that creatures became their names. _So if I call you Toothless, does that mean you'll always be friendly?_

Suddenly Hiccup's fingers itched to know what a dragon really felt like. Setting the fish aside, he started to stand and reached slowly towards the dragon's face.

However many steps forward he'd managed to get, that was one step back. The gummy smile slipped, and then the Night Fury showed its teeth and sprang away. It was heart-breaking, watching a creature meant for riding the winds as it floundered through the air to the other side of the cove – especially when, after using its fire to warm a place for it to sit, its gaze went to a little bird that chirped and flew away.

_He misses the sky._ Hiccup followed and sat down a few paces away from the dragon – Toothless – and waved a bit when it looked at him.

Toothless was unimpressed with his company. It settled down and shifted to place its damaged tail wing in front of its face. The remaining fin was rather large, about the size of that head in profile and nearly the same shape.

Hiccup carefully edged closer, trying to quiet his breathing, and reached out. His fingers had almost brushed the fin when Toothless lifted the tail to stare at him; he sprang to a standing position and rotated like a clockwork toy, walking away stiffly as though he'd never considered touching a dragon without permission. Meanwhile, the dragon walked away.

As long as Toothless seemed to be taking a nap, hanging by its tail from that tree branch, Hiccup retrieved his knife and cleaned it carefully before putting it away. Then he picked up a branch and settled on a rock, scratching lines in the dirt without really thinking of anything. Well, not quite true; he was still thinking of Toothless.

Something loomed up over his right shoulder. A quick glance confirmed that it was indeed Toothless; Hiccup decided to pretend that the dragon wasn't there and just keep drawing. It was close enough right now to seriously injure him if he touched without permission.

Toothless watched the free end of the stick intently as Hiccup turned the lines into an actual shape. Gradually a face emerged – one with perked ears, a tapered muzzle and little nose, and large round eyes. The dragon's ears flared as, evidently, it recognized that face as its own. Its attention shifted to one side and it seemed to think; then it hefted its weight up on its hind legs and waddled away.

Hiccup turned to watch, curious in his own turn. To his surprise, Toothless ripped up a sapling and started dragging the trunk of it in the ground, leaving heavy lines.

_Just how smart _is_ a Night Fury?_ By the look of things, Toothless was drawing a picture of its own. The finished work would be too big and squiggly for Hiccup to identify without getting much higher up, but he wondered…if Toothless recognized its own face in his drawing, would it now be drawing a picture of Hiccup's face?

It seemed to be: at one point it paused in its drawing to look over its shoulder at Hiccup, as though checking to see if it got something right.

A little later – after nearly combing Hiccup's hair with the sapling's branches – Toothless tossed its makeshift pencil aside and bobbed its head with an unmistakable air of satisfaction. It seemed quite proud of its masterpiece.

Hiccup stood and looked around. He still couldn't quite identify _what_ this art was, but it could be a face. There were a couple loops that could be eyes, and over here…

Toothless suddenly growled. Hiccup startled and shifted his weight backwards, lifting the foot he had just set down, and the dragon resumed his peaceful expression.

Hiccup looked carefully at where his foot had landed; there was a line there. _Interesting…_he carefully lowered and raised his foot a couple more times, keeping his eye on Toothless. Every time his toe touched the line, the dragon would growl until he lifted it again. Then he took care to set his foot down on the other side of the line _without_ touching it, and Toothless didn't growl.

_Okay, got it – no walking on the artwork._ Hiccup smiled at Toothless to show that he got it, and then turned all his attention to getting out of the portrait.

He must have picked the direction that had the most lines between him and "out of the portrait." It was fun, though; it was like dancing. From one step to the next and the next and…wait…Hiccup paused, just out of the drawing, as he registered that he was standing in a rather large shadow. A warm, heavy breath rippled his hair. He turned and looked up…and there was Toothless, eyes round and calm.

It was the closest Hiccup had come to this dragon since the tangle-net in the woods; the most obvious difference, of course, was that this time the dragon was loose. But…there also seemed to be…something else. Something different, not only from that day in the woods, but in the short time he'd been in the cove.

_Has the dragon changed? Or is it me?_ The thought made Hiccup feel rather strange. Like time had stopped and was resting on his shoulders, waiting for him to do something. Without his quite intending to, his hand reached for Toothless's face again.

Toothless turned away slightly and growled, but didn't run.

Hiccup drew his hand back.

Toothless fell silent.

_Now what?_ It was like a chess game, or a very different kind of dance…and it seemed to be Hiccup's turn again. He considered for a moment. Then, for the fourth time since he entered the cove, he reached out his hand; this time he lowered his head and closed his eyes, deliberately looking away.

Toothless turned to stare at Hiccup's hand, eyes as round as a couple of moons. It studied his palm, the lines that crossed it like a map to a strange new future; it seemed to understand that the next move was the last one in this strange pocket of time, and would have repercussions for both their kinds to the end of the known world. Hiccup had brought trust into this for the sake of the humans…now it was up to Toothless, for the sake of the dragons, to accept or refuse that trust.

Something dry, scaly, and warm pressed into Hiccup's palm, sending waves of heat and…something else…all the way up his arm to spill into his chest and loosen a knot of tension in his neck that he hadn't even realized was there. He turned his head carefully to look.

Toothless had closed its – his – own eyes and pressed his nose into Hiccup's hand. For a moment he stayed there; then he drew back, considered the boy – and snorted. _Then_, after the moment was over, he rushed to the other side of the cove.

Hiccup drew his hand back, struggling to draw a breath that felt normal. Time was flowing again – but what just happened?

And what had Toothless done to him?


	7. Chapter 7

_Watchtower, 2130 hours_

"…And with one twist, he ripped off my hand and swallowed it whole. I saw the look on his face: I was delicious. And he must have spread the word, because it wasn't a month before another one took my leg."

Gobber was sharing battle stories over thawed-out ration packs. His favorite was the one about his missing limbs – although really, on the subject of that Monstrous Nightmare finding him delicious, Astrid had her doubts. If it had, wouldn't it have simply carried the rest of him off to eat right then? Perhaps it had been driven off; but if it had spread the word that he was "delicious," surely the second Nightmare would have hauled him away.

Well…all right, he was describing Broad-Wings both times. It was hard for them to get very far carrying a fully armed and armored soldier, especially when said soldier was probably about three hundred pounds even without the extra equipment.

"Isn't it weird to think that your hand was inside a dragon?" Fishlegs asked, gesturing with his turkey leg. "Like…if your mind was still in control of it, you could have killed it from the inside by crushing its heart or something…"

Astrid turned to give Fishlegs a strange look. There were days when she didn't know if he was even human.

"I swear, I'm so angry right now," Snotlout snarled into his ration pack. "I'll avenge your beautiful hand and your beautiful foot – I'll bash off the legs of every dragon I fight; with my face!"

Gobber made a negative noise before Astrid could turn her strange look on Snotlout. "Not every dragon; it's the wings and tails you really want for anything of a higher class than Boulder. If it can't fly, it can't get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon."

Hiccup had barely touched his ration pack, and hadn't seemed to be paying attention to the story at all. At those words, however, he looked up – and there was an odd kind of look on his face.

Gobber stood up and stretched. "Well, I'd better be off to bed. You should be, too. Soon we'll be starting on the bigger boys; the ones that don't show their ugly faces here much in Tiny-Tooth. Slowly but surely we're working our way up to the Monstrous Nightmare…" he nodded at the grins on the crazy boys, "But who will win the honor of killing him?"

"It's going to be me," Tuffnut announced, "It's my destiny. See?"

Astrid turned away before she could see what it was that Tuffnut was messing with his clothes to show them, and saw that Hiccup had abandoned his ration pack and his seat.

Fishlegs gasped. "Your mom let you get a tattoo?" he asked, envious.

Astrid stood and looked after Hiccup as he ran down from the watchtower. He seemed to be far more on a mission than merely seeking his bed. It wasn't Tuffnut; he'd left before Tuffnut even started on that…

"It's not a tattoo, it's a birthmark."

"Okay, I've been stuck with you since birth, and that was never there before."

"Yes it was! You've just never seen me from the left side until now."

Astrid shook her head, deciding that Hiccup was none of her business and that everybody else in the room was completely insane, and turned to gather up her things. It was time to go home.

* * *

><p><em>Weapons stall, 2200 hours<em>

Hiccup settled at his desk and got to work, accessing the computer inventories of everything in storage from ready-for-use to ready-for-scrap. He started up a program, seeking something that could be recycled into a Night Fury's tail wing and wouldn't be missed.

_There – that fighter plane's tail flap._ It would move correctly, and they hadn't used planes since the first dragon attack three hundred years ago. The dragons were much better at aerial combat than the fighter pilots, and had evidently decided that anything capable of flying higher and faster than they could _and_ had powerful weapons would be too much of a threat to leave intact.

_Only problem is it's much too big; well, I know how to use that metal saw, and I can certainly figure out how to modify a flap._ Hiccup went to the rather well-organized scrap heap and dug out the flap. It wasn't exactly the right shape either, and it scraped when he tried to fold it – but it did seem to fold correctly.

First things first; something that would secure the new tail wing to what was left of that tail. Once he had that, and knew it was the right size and shape, he could work the flap correctly.

After a half hour of welding, cutting, welding again, and shaping, he had a connecting rod the length of Toothless's head. Each end had a ball-and-socket joint for things to be attached to, and there was a groove down the length to further hold the flap in place.

The next hour and a half were dedicated to dismantling, cleaning, and reshaping the flap. He wound up discarding a panel once he found that even sized correctly there were too many. Then he started fitting panels back together in the connecting rod's groove.

Finally – well after midnight – he tested the finished project in his hands. Looked right, moved right, _felt_ right; it was ready.

Time to see what dawn would bring.

* * *

><p><em>Secret cove, 0830 hours<em>

"Hey, Toothless…I brought breakfast…I hope you're hungry…" Hiccup staggered under his load. The knapsack wasn't so heavy, but it plus the new tail was something of an effort. Eventually he spilled the load. Fish…a wide variety of fish; he'd considered adding something else, but fish was what the dragons actually raided the least. It was the only dragon-sized meal he could collect without anyone noticing.

The fish pile had Toothless's full attention for sure.

"Okay, that's disgusting…we've got brown trout, Icelandic cod – and a whole smoked eel, if you're into that sort of thing…"

Toothless interrupted Hiccup with a growl, his hackles rising as he slowly backed up. His eyes were fixed on the eel. Hiccup carefully plucked the eel out of the pile and held it up – and Toothless screeched, recoiling.

"No, no, no, no," Hiccup threw the eel away in something of a panic. "It's okay…" he wiped his hand off on his pants. "Yeah, I don't like eel much, either."

Toothless considered the rest of the pile with suspicion for a moment – then his hunger took over and he started gulping things down.

"That's it…" Hiccup said softly, backing away from the dragon's head. "Stick with the good stuff…I'll be back here…minding my own business…" He set the hardware down opposite the remaining tail wing and started edging it closer.

The tail twitched away.

Hiccup glanced up warily; Toothless hadn't seemed to realize that anything was going on, and was simply wolfing fish. He tried again – and the tail sprang up, startling him.

"It's okay," he said, carefully patting the tail before grabbing onto it with both hands and trying to hold the blasted thing still. Then he nearly got jerked off his feet as Toothless lurched forwards to lick the knapsack clean.

Finally he turned around and sat on the tail. He worked the buckles around the spot just under the tail wings and fastened them in place.

_That_ got Toothless's attention. He went very still for a moment, unnoticed by Hiccup. Then, experimentally, he tried to move his tail. The wing fluttered, but nothing else happened. Then another buckle drew tight, this one on the short piece of tail beyond the wing, and he gaped indignantly.

Hiccup kept adjusting the fit of the new tail, oblivious to the fact that the dragon was getting ready to launch. He tugged the flaps open and compared it to the original. "Not bad, it works…"

Suddenly he was flying backwards, the ground dropping away at an alarming rate.

"No, no, no, no, no!" he screamed frantically. Then he noticed something: he'd forgotten to install some way for Toothless to control the flaps himself. It was closed, providing no assistance.

Toothless started listing again. In another minute, he would crash.

Hiccup grabbed that new tail and pulled hard, praying that he had enough upper body strength to open the flaps against the wind.

A rush of wind and they were going back up.

"It's working!" Hiccup screamed in excitement before pulling up hard on the flaps, angling Toothless to the right. Soon they were soaring above the cove's lake. "Yes! Yes, I did it!"

Toothless looked back briefly – and decided that he didn't want Hiccup on his tail. He twisted in the air, cracking his tail like a whip, and Hiccup went flying off to land in the lake. Except then the new wing wouldn't stay open, and he crashed in the lake too.

Hiccup came back up with a triumphant cry. Toothless had flown again – and he'd been lucky to get a taste of it.

_Maybe I just won't bother to add any control things for Toothless right now. If that's what real flight tastes like, I want seconds!_

Besides, he wasn't sure he had the capability to design a control device; that would require so much experimenting that he would be better off getting Toothless to the stall for the experiments. And that had all kinds of margin for trouble.

* * *

><p><em>Training arena, 0900 hours<em>

"Today, it's about teamwork." Gobber tossed a smoke bomb into the arena just as the doors for the Zippleback's pen crashed open. "A wet dragon head can't light its fire, but you have to douse its head at the right time. Soak it too early and it has plenty of time to shake off; soak it too late and you're dead. The Hideous Zippleback takes a long time to prepare its gas breath, and it only lights up after it has expelled a large cloud. This gives you two chances to wet it down."

By the time Gobber had finished speaking, the six students were gathered together in three groups of two. Each of them was holding a pail of water; since Berk was surrounded by sea, water was the most readily available supply for dousing a fire, so they were learning how best to use the handiest resource.

"Razor-edged serrated teeth, that inject venom for pre-digestion," Fishlegs whispered, eyeing the smoke uneasily, "Prefers ambush attack, crushing its victims…"

"_Will you please stop that?_" Hiccup hissed around Fishlegs's shoulder. Under any other circumstance, the larger boy's trivia would be interesting and even entertaining; now, however, it was just nerve-wracking.

Snotlout turned in a circle, shoving Tuffnut ahead of him. "If that dragon ever shows its face…" he began, fear and excitement warring in his tone, "I'm going to – there!" He and Tuffnut both flung the contents of their buckets towards what looked in the smoke like a dragon's head. Instead of a dragon's hiss, they were greeted by female yelps.

"Team Valkyrie to Team Brawn, friendly fire," Astrid shouted over the comm.

Ruffnut waved some of the smoke aside. "In other words: it's us, you idiots!"

"Team Brawn to team Valk," Tuffnut replied with a snicker, "Your butts are getting bigger; we thought you were a dragon."

Snotlout made a face that suggested he thought Tuffnut's joke was funny, and then he started trying to cover for Astrid's benefit. "Not that there's anything wrong with a dragonesque figure…"

Astrid punched him in the face, while Ruffnut threw her pail to hit her brother in the head.

Suddenly something grabbed Tuffnut and dragged him into the smoke. Ruffnut started after him, anxious now, but Astrid stopped her.

"Wait…"

A tail swept out of the smoke and knocked the legs out from under both girls. Astrid's bucket rolled away, its contents spilling uselessly over the ground – and then Tuffnut ran over Ruffnut on his way to the exit screaming something about being hurt.

_Now_ Hiccup remembered something he'd noticed in the files about the Zippleback: it was almost as good at hiding as the Changewing, only lacking the ability to flatten out.

Fishlegs remembered it too, apparently. "Chances of survival are dwindling into the single digits now…"

A muddy gray-green dragon slinked out of the smoke, muttering at them. Its face looked a bit like Toothless's, except it had a bigger nose and smaller chin and its ears looked more like a lizard's frill than cat ears. It also had teeth too long to retract.

Fishlegs made the mistake of moving, and the Zippleback followed him first. He stumbled backwards, sloshing water, and in the stress of the moment he managed to upend his pail over the dragon's head.

The Zippleback shook off, almost carelessly.

"Oh," Fishlegs mock-laughed, his back rigid, "Too soon." Then he had to run screaming for the exit as the dragon sent a torrent of gas after him.

Hiccup stood alone, the last member of "Team Brain" with the last of the six water buckets. The Zippleback considered him, clicking sparks off its teeth.

_Now or never _– Hiccup swung the bucket with all his might, sending a torrent of water. It splashed on the ground at the dragon's feet, never cresting high enough to even wet the lower edges of its ears.

The Zippleback looked briefly between him and the water, as if asking, "That was it? That's just sad."

Hiccup slumped. "Oh, come on…"

The Zippleback pounced, ears flaring _wide_ as it snapped more sparks, and Hiccup fell over backwards trying to retreat. He vaguely heard Gobber screaming his name from the sidelines – for the third time this week – and mismatched footsteps pounding towards him.

Gobber was going to get there way too late this time…

Suddenly the dragon stopped, its massive nostrils quivering and its eyes widening; then, amazingly, it took a step backward. All its attention was on Hiccup's waist, where just a half hour before he had wrapped the eel to transport it out of the cove.

Hiccup took a deep breath, hardly daring to trust his good luck. Then he surged to his feet, waving his hand at the dragon's face and shouting, "Back!"

To his further amazement, the dragon backed up another two steps. It looked like it was trying to camouflage itself but was too scared – _scared_ – to concentrate.

Hiccup kept walking, waving his hands at the Zippleback's face when it looked like it was too close and shouting the order to retreat. Finally, when it was back in its cage, he unwound the eel belt. "Now think about what you've done…" he threw the eel in.

It was kind of amusing, seeing a dragon the size of a draft horse trying to push itself up the wall of a little room to stay away from a snake-like fish that it could easily shred. With a smirk, Hiccup shut the cage doors and turned around, rubbing his hands on his vest. That was when he noticed something else.

Everyone else in the room was staring at him like he'd grown a second head. Fishlegs was so stunned that he dropped his bucket.

_Just play cool._ "Okay, so are we done?" Hiccup asked, spreading his hands. "Because I've got some things I need to…uh…" he edged his way towards the door, "Yup – see you tomorrow!"

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ Yes, I know that the Hideous Zippleback has two heads. That, however, is a detail I find particularly offensive – that an entire species of anything big enough to see without a microscope has multiple heads. This is my version of the same dragon._


	8. Chapter 8

The next few days were a blur.

First Hiccup had to make a saddle – if he was going to control Toothless at all, he had to be in the air with the dragon. And riding backwards on the tail for longer than he did that first day would make him airsick, and Toothless wouldn't like it because it couldn't possibly be beneficial for his balance in the air (about halfway through modifying a broken water-bike's seat into a saddle Hiccup ran statistics on the Night Fury graphic to check; his ninety-pound weight on the tail _was_ detrimental).

It took the attachment of a lot of straps – and finding the balance between _too many_ and _not enough_. Hiccup wanted to _know_ that his perch wasn't going to fall off, but he also didn't want to force Toothless to stand around while a couple dozen buckles were fastened. Eventually he found a number that seemed reasonable, although the only way to know if it really was would be if Toothless was willing to stand still through a secure fastening.

Step one, make a saddle: done.

* * *

><p>Step two: get the saddle on the dragon.<p>

When Hiccup walked in with that thing, Toothless evidently thought that he was initiating play. He grinned cheerfully at Hiccup and took off running around and around the cove, forcing the boy to hold the saddle over his head and run after him. Eventually Hiccup stopped chasing, put the saddle on a fallen tree and sat on it; Toothless got curious enough to come over and sniff it, and eventually he let Hiccup fasten the thing on.

Riding was much easier when he was facing forward on Toothless's back, and had something other than scales to hang onto. Manipulating the tail with a handheld rope, however, proved impossible. The angle was wrong, he couldn't look where he was going, and by the time he was pulling hard enough he wasn't hanging onto the saddle securely enough. One unexpected veer from Toothless and Hiccup tumbled off into the lake again.

* * *

><p>Step three: get safety lines on the saddle.<p>

Hiccup rigged a flight harness for himself and put metal eyes on it and the saddle for cables to be secured to. Much safer; it wouldn't do Toothless any good to throw him in midair. If anything happened to Hiccup before he was able to construct a solo-flight mechanism, Toothless would be grounded for the rest of his life. _And a downed dragon is a dead dragon._

Tying the rope around his ankle worked a little better: he could hold the saddle with both hands, which was more secure, and it was easier to pull against the wind. But it was still nearly impossible to control. The tech-tail would do weird things in the air when he wasn't looking, so he still couldn't watch where they were going, so he would miss important cues from Toothless. Helping a dragon fly was impossible when you couldn't anticipate what the next move was to supply help in time.

That time they didn't crash in the lake; they crashed in an itchy field of tall grass. Hiccup managed to unhook himself and started to leave, only to notice that Toothless wasn't following…was rolling around in the grass, making a loud rumbling noise that was probably supposed to be purring, and grabbing at the long blades with his feet.

A three-hundred-pound dragon was acting like a little kitty in the catnip.

_Dragon nip?_ Hiccup collected himself a little bundle to analyze later.

* * *

><p>"Later" turned out to be in the ring with a Gronkle. It slammed Tuffnut one with its face and then rushed Hiccup, who cringed and held out the grass like it would magically stop the dragon.<p>

Magically enough, it did; it seemed that Gronkles were more sensitive to the grass than Night Furies. One tiny handful had that dragon rolling around in ecstasy, especially when Hiccup rubbed the stuff on its gritty nose.

Having dragons purring at his feet like cats…he could get used to in time.

Being the center of positive attention by the other trainees…would take even more time. It seemed like all of them wanted to stand next to him, all of them wanted to know how he made that Gronkle do that, all of them were smiling…he finally made some excuse about having left his gun at the ring (he really had) and made a break for it. He nearly collided with Astrid, who was the only trainee to not join his mysterious fan club; in fact, she was glaring at him.

Another day he might wonder about that, but right now he was just relieved that it wasn't another face pressing too close.

* * *

><p><em>If Toothless is like a cat…maybe he'll enjoy a good scratch.<em> The next day Hiccup tested that theory, and it seemed to be a success. That, or Toothless just had some extremely itchy scales on his neck just back of his ears and bracketing his spinal ridge. He purred and leaned into Hiccup's hands so much that he started towering over the boy; it got to where the easiest thing to reach was a slightly knobby spot under his chin.

His fingers barely started to work there when Toothless suddenly went very still, his eyes opening wide and his purring short-circuiting into a weird sound reminiscent of a croak; then he dropped to the ground with a delighted sigh.

One happy puddle of a dragon, and all Hiccup had had to do was scratch his chin.

_Wow…I wonder if that would work on any other dragons…_

* * *

><p>He got his chance to find out. Today's dragon (the Nadder) barreled its way past Astrid, taking every shot she had on its naturally-armored face, before rushing Hiccup.<p>

_Did the Gronkle tell the Nadder about me? "Hey, this human's something else; rush him and the battle will be over…"_ Hiccup looked up and saw that he'd ended up in the Nadder's blind spot. _Well, that's one worry out of the way…_

The dragon sniffed his face – and then jumped in surprise when Hiccup touched its scales. They were a weird texture, very different from what covered Toothless; finding that sweet spot was a little harder. Not like the Nadder was complaining, in fact it was twitching into his hands as he scratched.

Just when Hiccup was starting to worry that not all dragons had a sweet spot, he found it. The Nadder jerked like it had been zapped, made an _eep_ kind of noise, and collapsed at his feet with a rattle of spiny scales.

Astrid was several paces away with her rifle in hand, staring along the barrel like she couldn't believe what had just happened.

Dinner that night was…an odd affair. No sooner had Hiccup, arriving late at the mess hall, sat down alone at a table when he was joined by not only most of his classmates, but what looked like half the soldiers who had stayed home. It seemed that someone had spread the word of his magical ability to subdue dragons with his bare hands, and this increased his popularity status by a hundredfold.

_How will I be able to cross camp?_ Maybe he would be better off moving to the cove until the attention died down.

* * *

><p>The next day dawned clear and very bright – and Hiccup discovered that Toothless liked to chase dots of light. It happened by accident; he'd brought some bike parts to assemble into a stirrup control system, and some of it had caught the light and started reflecting spots that Toothless immediately started trying to catch. Hiccup found it so funny that he spent the rest of that early morning reflecting light around the cove for the dragon.<p>

_I'll have to come back later with fish, keep him still while I assemble this thing… _There was no time now: he had to get back to dragon-training.

* * *

><p>The Terrible Terror was built very low and sprawling; it moved rather awkwardly.<p>

"Do we have to face this one?" Tuffnut asked wryly, "Because I already killed one the size of my…"

The Terror lunged before he could finish his sentence, tackling him over and working its claws and teeth at his armor in search of a spot to rip his plating open. Just about the time it thought of trying to get the helmet off, Hiccup decided to be merciful: he activated the sighting laser on his rifle and aimed it at a spot in the Terror's field of vision.

_Hope the red light works…_it had been white in the cove.

It seemed that the color made no difference. Ignoring Tuffnut's wails about being hurt, the Terror started chasing after the light and trying to eat it as he moved it across the arena back to the pen.

"Wow, he's better than you ever were," Tuffnut commented to Astrid as he lurched unsteadily back to his feet, considerably bruised and scratched.

Astrid went dangerously still. Her faceplate was down, so there was no reading her expression – but by the rest of her body language, she was ticked. Hiccup glanced back as he closed the door on the Terrible Terror and decided that she was trying to figure out who to kill first: him or Tuffnut.

_Definitely want to make myself scarce for the rest of the day…_

* * *

><p>"<em>How dare he?<em>" Astrid screamed before unloading her rifle at the trees. The sound of bullets hitting wood gave her a sense of release; she wished that she dared shooting something else, like Hiccup's front door. She probably would, except then she'd have to explain – and then she'd have a demerit or something for losing her temper.

How dare Hiccup get so good at dragon-training practically overnight? How dare he get so good that he could use his _bare hands_? How dare he get better than _she_ was?

_You could ask him to share his secrets…then you could outreach him using his own tools._ The thought made her angrier – as though Astrid Hofferson needed any help to be the best. _If I ever ask him, it'll be with both hands wrapped around his neck…_

She brought her rifle up to aim and came to a very sudden stop: Hiccup was in the crosshairs, staring back at her with a bag in his arms.

_What's he doing out here?_

Before she could get her mouth to shape the words at any audible volume, Hiccup straightened and started walking swiftly away. He looked guilty.

Relishing the idea of catching him at something against regulations, Astrid followed as far as the rock he'd ducked behind and climbed on top.

No one was there.

Astrid banged her fist on the rock in frustration. He'd lost her.

* * *

><p>While Toothless chowed down, Hiccup trussed his tail up in cables. It had taken a lot of digging to find cables that were no stiffer or more flexible than Toothless's tail, but he'd found some that were long enough to serve. Some were long enough to also be hooked up to the stirrup by themselves; some weren't, and had to be extended with second best. This one to move it up, that one to move it down, these two to coordinate how far it opened or closed, and all these carefully designed hoops to hold the whole thing on the tail while still allowing for free movement… the stirrup itself was anchored firmly to the dragon's side by more straps crisscrossing from his front and back legs up to the saddle. No sense abusing the hardware by having that foot flapping around. By the time Hiccup was done, it looked like some crude torture device. Toothless didn't react, though.<p>

The wind had picked up something fierce; Hiccup decided that instead of actual flight, they would go somewhere up in the wind and simply ride it like a kite. That would limit the amount of crashing they would have.

Toothless seemed to get the idea; he also seemed to think it was a little weird to be tethered to a tree stump and simply let the wind hold him up, but he put up with it. He had to be getting tired of all the crashing himself.

The next couple of minutes consisted of catching the wind, Hiccup finding a tail setting and seeing what it did to where they were in the air, and then they would drop down again and he would write it down on his notepad. Everything went smoothly – until the wind suddenly gusted and the rope, already taking more than it could safely handle, snapped. Dragon and rider sailed screaming backwards to crash in the trees.

Toothless recovered first and rolled back to his feet, forgetting that Hiccup was tethered to the saddle, and gave his head a shake.

Hiccup regrouped a moment later and got his feet under him. Then he tried to unclip his harness from the saddle.

It wouldn't let go. The clasp was damaged, twisted by the sudden force.

"Oh, great…"

* * *

><p>If only he could handle the problem in the cove. But – none of the tools he had brought would open the clasp. He didn't want to cut the safety line: he'd taken lengths of some better-quality elastic cable for it, stuff that <em>would<em> be missed if he had to keep replacing it. Better to do without that as long as he could get away with it. No, he had to get back to the shop.

If only he could head back alone. However, he couldn't get the saddle off while he was still tethered to it, and it was an awfully big armload anyway. As for _his_ harness…he tried. The clasps keeping it shut had gotten jammed too, probably because they were all right next to the safety lines and had gotten a hard yank when he'd been flung as far clear as the lines would let him. And there wasn't a thing he could do about it without the same tools he needed for the mangled hook-and-eye.

Therefore, as soon as the sun went down Hiccup led Toothless right into the village. He planned his path very carefully, keeping well away from people and anything that might make noise if a larger dragon stepped on or brushed against it. The going was slow, partly to keep the noise down as low as possible – and partly because Toothless wanted to see everything. Hiccup had to keep pulling on the harnesses to keep them both going in the right direction.

He breathed much easier when they'd both gotten to the shop. Gobber wasn't there, and they'd had no crashes en route until after they'd gotten fully inside: Toothless found a bucket, stuck his face in to see if anything was in it, and tossed it into a full weapons bin when it turned out to be empty.

_I'll have to clean that up later…_

As it turned out, someone heard them.

"Hiccup?"

Both were startled by the voice outside the window – Toothless because it was the first voice he'd ever heard that wasn't Hiccup's, and Hiccup because he recognized the voice as it had an echo in his headset.

_Astrid!_ That…actually wasn't quite as bad as it could have been. Anyone in his astonishingly large new fan club would have simply barged in to see what he was up to, and would have discovered Toothless instantly. Astrid…as long as he went to her first and could talk her into going away, she wouldn't investigate farther.

_I'm still tethered…_he hadn't gotten anything fully opened yet. Couldn't be helped. He opened the window, hopped out, and instantly closed it before Astrid could see beyond him.

"Astrid! Hi, Astrid, hi Astrid, hi Astrid…" No conversationalist was he – something that his entire fan club had figured out already. The nervier he got, the harder it was to get a coherent sentence out.

"I normally don't care what people do, but you're acting weird." Yup, Astrid was ticked.

Toothless suddenly yanked on the tether, causing Hiccup to stumble backwards.

"Well, weird_er_," Astrid amended. Then her eyes widened as Hiccup lifted off the ground all on his own, dragged up the shutters by an unseen force – and then he went _through_ the shutters.

Astrid sprang after him and opened the window…only to find an empty shop.

Automatically her hand went to her headset. "Hiccup, this is Astrid. What on earth…" then she realized she was hearing an echo from the floor. Hiccup's headset wasn't on his head: he'd left it behind.

That was cowardly, Hiccup acknowledged as he and Toothless bounded away into the night with tools on their saddle. But what could he say even over a com-line? Astrid might have been his lifelong crush, but she was the last trainee he would think to trust with this monumental secret. She was a better soldier than he was; she would simply kill Toothless.

* * *

><p>Three ships had sailed out; only one returned. By the looks of things, though, no one had died this time – the ship was rather overloaded, and everybody looked like they'd been stretching rations to the limit.<p>

Gobber greeted Stoik with a casual salute. "I trust you found the nest, at least?"

"Not even close," Stoik grumbled. "I hope you had better luck?"

"If by that you mean your parenting troubles are over, then…yes."

Before Stoik could ask what that meant, at least four of the soldiers who had stayed home ran past him with greetings, congratulations, and a lot of comments that implied to a secretly overprotective father that his son was dead and what a relief. He turned to stare at Gobber.

"He's gone?"

Not quite grasping the misunderstanding, Gobber shrugged. "Yeah, most afternoons, and most of those he leaves his headset – but who can blame him? The life of a celebrity is very rough; he can hardly walk through the village without being swarmed by his new fans…"

Stoik grabbed Gobber's shoulder, finally realizing what was _really_ being said. "Hiccup?" he asked, clarifying that they were indeed talking about his son.

"Who would have thought it, eh? He has this _way_ with the beasts…"

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ I had to come up with some reason why Hiccup didn't just cut the line, or take off his harness and go get the tools he needed without Toothless. ^_^_


	9. Chapter 9

**_Sorry this is a day late; there was a power outage yesterday morning, and very often if I can't post a chapter at practically the crack of dawn it doesn't happen at all. That certainly happened yesterday - I was busy all day. I'll see if I can post two chapters today to catch up (the next one's likely to be kind of short, so that might work out), but otherwise we'll be off a day._**

* * *

><p><em>Sea stacks, 1500 hours<em>

Hiccup still didn't know why he never, ever got airsick no matter what malfunctions happened with the tail, how many ups and downs and sudden veers they had. All he knew was that when he and Toothless finally got out over the waves for a real test drive, they _both_ were nearly quivering with anticipation.

"Okay, bud, we're going to take this nice and slow," Hiccup called over the wind, patting the side of Toothless's neck. Then he double-checked his cheat sheet, which was clipped to the saddle. "Here we go, position…three – no, four," he shifted his foot and the metal flap opened.

Toothless looked back at his tail briefly, then turned forwards again with a weird sound between a grunt and a snort; he seemed unimpressed with "slow." Of course, this was the same dragon that used to dive-bomb Berk at well over 100 miles per hour.

Things started out very well. They coasted in a big circle and then swooped low under a couple of sea stacks that were in the shape of a giant arch, all the while with Hiccup shouting encouragements to Toothless. He was pretty excited that he'd finally invented something completely new that actually worked.

Then…

"Sorry!" Hiccup shouted as they slammed into a stack. He hadn't seen it in time to even pretend at dodging. The second stack was a little better as far as what angle they hit it was concerned, but Hiccup forgot to change the tail angle any to swerve and instead had leaned backwards as though the rest of his body weight was sufficient to alter direction. "That was my fault."

Toothless jerked his head back and smacked Hiccup in the face with his ear, as if saying "Get your head in the game and hurry up with the transitions!"

"Aagh! Yeah, yeah, I'm on it! Position four – uh, three…"

They tilted skywards. Toothless howled in excitement as they gained altitude. This dragon was very much built for taking itself up and down quickly. How high up they were, it was…exhilarating.

"Yeah! Go, baby! Oh, this is amazing: the wind in my – cheat sheet!" his excitement turned to panic as his cheat sheet – the only tool he had to remind him what position did what – caught the wind and blew away. "STOP!" he screamed, letting go of the saddle altogether to grab with both hands after the paper.

Toothless came to a sudden, wobbly stop above the clouds…and Hiccup kept going for a moment, his harness coming unclipped from the saddle. It seemed that when he'd done that hasty repair job on the hooks, he'd loosened them a bit too much.

For one instant they hung there in the sky, all that earlier excitement turned straight to terror. Then they both plunged screaming for the ground.

"Oh gosh, oh god, oh no…" Hiccup struggled to regroup, his entire miserable life flashing before his eyes. Then he started shouting to Toothless. "Okay, you have to angle yourself towards me…"

Toothless seemed to understand – although his first attempt at angling was accompanied by a vicious spin that resulted in smacking Hiccup hard in the face with his tail. Then, with time rapidly running out, he got the angle right and wound up under the boy.

Hiccup finally pulled himself back to the saddle and got his safety lines refastened, his cheat sheet clenched in his teeth. Then, screaming around it, he clicked the tail to what he desperately hoped was the _pull up_ position.

They pulled up, Toothless's wings flaring open like a parachute – but they were going way too fast to stop, and shot over the treetops with contrails streaming off their wingtips.

Toothless screeched, with his legs extended stiffly in front of him as though they could aid in braking. He could see what was coming – a lot more sea stacks. And he remembered how the first sea stacks had gone, and in a simple way understood just how much faster they were going now. From his point of view, they were in a lot more trouble.

Hiccup realized this too, as he pulled the cheat sheet from his teeth and tried to read it. He couldn't hold it open, and if he was going to use it he was going to need it _before_ he clipped it safely back to the saddle. If they had to use it, they were going to be very dead and no one would ever find the bodies.

So he wouldn't use it. Live or die, he would have to trust exclusively to his memory.

Hiccup's headset was filtering the wind down to something less than deafening, and he was still hearing nothing but its roar – or maybe that was the blood in his own ears that was drowning out everything else. Feeling the adrenalin start to take hold, he threw the paper away and flattened to the saddle.

Toothless felt the change in his rider's posture and altered his own from _trying to stop_ into _bring it on_. They wouldn't be able to stop before the sea stacks anyway, so they might as well meet these new obstacles head-on.

_Right._

_Left._

_Right._

_Left._

_Barrel roll._

They were moving in perfect harmony, Hiccup spotting minute changes in the position of Toothless's head and neck and adjusting the tail accordingly. It was like they were one being instead of two.

Finally, they were clear of the sea stacks – and they'd managed to dump enough speed that they could control what was left. Hiccup sat back up on the saddle, fighting to fill his lungs again.

_That…was the most successful test drive ever._ His hands came up and he let out a triumphant scream. "YEAH!"

Toothless echoed that cry – with a plasma burst, that exploded into a cloud of fire near enough that they were going to fly through it.

"Come on…" Hiccup groaned, slumping. _Humans aren't fireproof, you crazy reptile._

He should have found a visor somewhere. Or a full helmet.

* * *

><p><em>Secluded beach, 1600 hours<em>

Hiccup finally managed to come back up from some kind of shock. His hair felt like it was permanently stuck in the "took an explosion to the face" style, and his clothes were singed. He had to blink rapidly to make the dryness in his eyes go away.

Toothless had scared a bunch of fish towards this beach and blasted them out of the water. Just now he was making a noise that…_oh no…_Hiccup turned to look just as the dragon deposited half a fish on the mostly-rocky beach. It was the head half this time.

"Uh…" Hiccup began as Toothless looked at him expectantly. "No thanks, I'm good." He pulled a ration bar out of his pocket and showed it to the dragon, opening it and taking down a bite just to show that it was food.

Toothless gave his head a shake, as if to say, "You humans eat the weirdest things."

_You're hardly one to talk, bud: you eat raw fish, bones and all._

There was chatter from the waves; like a bunch of seagulls, a squadron of Short-Wing dragons was coming to investigate the smell of fish. They seemed to be mostly mini Rumblehorns – trackers.

Hiccup glanced uneasily at Toothless, who was growling low and protecting his fish pile with his paws.

One dared approach the big pile, and Toothless let out a sharp snarl to drive it back. Another grabbed the fish half and dragged it a few paces away – where a third started a quarrel over it.

_Short-Wings; they'd take over every island in the northern seas if they could only stop fighting with each other._ It was kind of fun to watch; at least, Hiccup thought so.

A sudden movement caught his attention. A Rumblehorn had dared try to take a fish from the big pile and was caught by Toothless; after a moment of tug-of-war the inedible tail fins came off in the Short-Wing's mouth and Toothless swallowed the rest whole. Adding insult to injury, he laughed seal-like at the little greenie.

The Rumblehorn wouldn't stand for that. It spit out the fins and started scratching its tiny feet like a bull ready to charge, growling and hissing – it was going to breathe fire, Hiccup knew it. So, it seemed, did Toothless…and he was a lot less worried about it. Of course, _he_ wouldn't be worried about it: he was fireproof.

The little greenie took a deep breath…

Toothless spit a tiny plasma burst into its mouth – causing a backfire, it seemed.

The Short-Wing bounced clear off the ground for a moment before dropping down and landing on its face. Then it struggled back to its feet and staggered drunkenly away from the pile.

Hiccup chuckled, a little surprised. "Not so fireproof on the inside, are you?" He snagged a small fish that Toothless had missed in his enthusiastic guard of the pile and tossed it to the Rumblehorn. "Here you go."

The greenie jerked, startled – and then gulped the whole fish down, so quickly that Hiccup barely had time to see the bulge travel its throat. Then, as Hiccup settled more comfortably against Toothless's side, it turned to stare at him and started a slow approach. Well…more like a pattern of a few rapid steps and a long pause. Every time it stopped, it sniffed in his direction with its large nose. Finally, evidently deciding that the human wasn't a threat, it slid right up alongside his left thigh and snuggled there in his warmth.

Hiccup went very still for a moment. This was a completely wild dragon – had probably never even known the inside of a human dwelling. And yet, here it was; totally calm, trusting…it was _letting him_ gently stroke its wings, as he got over his uncertainty.

"Everything we know about you guys," Hiccup breathed, "Is wrong."

Well, not _everything_. You couldn't have a fire-breathing predator and _not_ say that it was dangerous. Of course it was. But so were the weapons they used every day. A nonliving weapon, however, couldn't do anything other than what it was built to do; dragons could be trained for peace.

Look at where he was right now.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ Yes, I know that those were Terrible Terrors. With the dragons of my universe, all breeds come in all four sizes – and since I'm using my universe's classification for these dragons, it didn't make much sense not to explore that._


	10. Chapter 10

_Munitions stall, 2000 hours_

Hiccup was dead tired. At some point after flying back to the cove, and then running back to town and avoiding everybody on the way to the stall, the last of his adrenalin ran out and he wondered why he hadn't simply gone home to bed.

He took his headset off and started playing with it while he rested his head on his desk. He was too tired to even think about anything; when the footsteps approached, he didn't immediately register that it wasn't Gobber until after he turned his head.

Suddenly adrenalin was pumping again.

"Dad! You're back!" Hiccup jerked out of his chair and straight to attention before remembering that his tablet was on with a spectacular picture of Toothless, and he dropped his hand to shut the thing off. "Gobber's not here, so…"

"I know," Stoik settled on a stool next to Hiccup, "I came to speak with you."

His voice was low and dangerous…this was bad.

"You've been keeping secrets…"

This was very bad. "I…don't know…" _What you're talking about_ was how that sentence probably would have ended.

"I am the highest ranking officer in this corner of the world. Everyone reports to me. _Nothing_ happens under my jurisdiction that doesn't eventually get back to me."

At this point, Hiccup thought that he might need a new classification for how bad this was. Scenarios started running through his head, mostly second-guessing himself and wishing that he'd rigged up a solo-flight mechanism as long as he'd had Toothless in the stall the other night…_wait, there hadn't been time before Astrid found me…_

"Now, let's talk…" Stoik shifted a bit, very blatantly barring the door, "About that dragon."

Oh, dear Lord – someone had found Toothless. Hiccup's shoulders slumped and he started verbally scrambling. "Dad, I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know…" then he stared in astonishment.

The big man was laughing. It was a nice-sounding laugh, considering that Hiccup didn't get to hear it often.

After a moment Hiccup started laughing along (he stopped fairly quick, since he sounded more like a tortured seagull than like actual mirth), and he asked hopefully, "So…you're…not upset?"

Stoik's laughter stopped immediately. The mirth didn't. "What? I was hoping for this!"

"Uh…you were?" Hiccup was starting to suspect that they were on different wavelengths. Again.

"And believe me, it only gets better! Wait until you spill a Nadder's guts for the first time! And mounting your first Gronkle head on the wall…what a feeling it is!" His massive fist shot out and thumped Hiccup in the chest, sending him toppling backwards to sit in an empty bin. "You really had me going there! After so many years of being the worst soldier this unit has ever seen…"

Hiccup had just managed to pull himself out of the bin. Now he was wondering why he'd bothered.

"Lord knows, it was rough, I almost gave up on you, and all this time you were holding out on me!" Stoik calmed down with a heavy sigh and added, "With you doing so well in the ring…we finally have something to talk about."

_Right, except for one thing: we really don't._ Telling his dad about what was really happening in the ring…he would have to bring Toothless into it. And now that he knew what General Stoik was on about, he knew that the big man hadn't changed his views any. It would be homicide.

Talk about long and awkward silences, though. Hiccup stood at attention, playing with his headset with one hand, while Stoik sat there waiting in anticipation. Eventually, though, he grasped that his son wasn't going to speak and started fishing in his bag.

"I brought you something…to keep you safe in the ring."

Hiccup's interest perked slightly. It was a helmet like the one his dad always wore when he went out; he studied the thing and played with the visor a bit. "Wow…thanks."

"Your mother would have wanted you to have it. It's got half of her breastplate built in."

Hiccup's hand jerked from the curving dome of the helmet like it had burned him and made a weird face at his dad, who knocked on his own helmet.

"Matching set; it keeps her close."

_Waaayyy more information than I'd ever wanted to have about either helmet._ Hiccup carefully set his helmet on the desk. Then he faked a yawn.

That did seem to end the conversation. They started a bizarre exchange of sentences, running over each other but ultimately saying the same thing ("It's getting late, see you back at the barracks, there's the helmet, bye."), before Stoik got himself out the door and Hiccup let out a heavy sigh of relief.

_Well, I'm going to have to wear the breast-hat thing at least once…_Hiccup's thoughts were interrupted by a crash from outside. _My dad is too big for this shop._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ Wow, I actually did manage two chapters in a day! ^_^ The next one's going to be a great deal longer._


	11. Chapter 11

_Arena, 1000 hours_

The Gronkle buzzed around the arena, looking for someone to attack – or possibly looking for a nice convenient escape route. Statistical analyses flashed across Hiccup's new faceplate, distracting him. _Need to shut that off…_

Suddenly Astrid was next to him behind a barricade. He knew it was Astrid without even looking, despite that she was fully armored: she was practically radiating a dried-blood aura of rage, and had been doing so for several days now. He tried to edge away – to give her more room, of course…

And she noticed him. With a quick twist his shield was on the ground between them and her faceplate banged into his, so close together that he could see her blazing eyes through the glass. "Stay out of my way! I'm winning this thing."

Then she was gone again, either ignoring or flat-out not hearing Hiccup's reply, "Good, please, by all means."

There was a _crowd_ up there. Why was there a crowd up there? Oh right – because Hiccup was this ultimate soldier capable of bringing any raging dragon to cower at his feet. Seriously, was anyone up there to watch anyone else in the ring? He turned to look and saw his dad, helmet on but faceplate open. The big man pumped a fist in a "be strong" kind of gesture. Hiccup opened his own helmet and gave back a smile that felt so fake…he wished he was somewhere else. Maybe with Toothless, but definitely he wanted to be anywhere other than here.

Suddenly the Gronkle rushed him, catching him on its face and shoving him backwards towards the wall. Both his rifle and his shield clattered to the ground. Instinct took over – he started scratching everywhere he could easily reach that looked like it might be itchy. The Gronkle's flight pattern went weird…and then it dropped and tumbled onto its side, foot waving in the air like some dogs did when you scratched a spot that they really liked.

And wouldn't you know it, just as Hiccup was picking himself up from the sudden ride, helmet-less and shaken…Astrid charged from behind a barricade. She took one look at the situation, at Hiccup's berserk gestures trying to "give" the win to her, and started throwing a major tantrum that included throwing her helmet across the arena. There seemed to be insults mixed in there.

"So…later," Hiccup said casually as his dad called the crowd to silence. Then, when Gobber hooked his arm and swung him back, "Uh, look, I'm kind of late for…"

"What?" Astrid snarled, getting the muzzle of her rifle right under Hiccup's chin, "Late for what, _exactly?_" She looked ready to murder him right on the spot.

Interrupting the spat below, Stoik called down, "The Strategist has decided."

The "Strategist" was the oldest living person in all of Berk. Arthritis or osteoporosis (or both) had shrunk and curved her frame until she was a little hunchback, her skin was wrinkled and her hair was completely white. She never spoke anymore, instead clicking Morse code on her microphone or simply gesturing.

Everyone went completely silent as her bony fingers went to her mouthpiece. Taps seemed to echo all over the crowd as her message was sent to all.

_Private…Haddock…_

There was more, possibly his first name, but since there was only one Haddock down in the ring (and only one _Private_ Haddock on Berk) the entire crowd went wild before she could truly finish.

Hiccup slumped and eyed Astrid apologetically as her deadly aura turned nearly black. What a cruel twist of fate: the person to win the honor of killing the Monstrous Nightmare was the person who least wanted it.

Suddenly Snotlout grabbed Hiccup and half-threw him up onto Fishleg's shoulder. They and the twins were making almost as much noise as the crowds above.

"THAT'S MY BOY!" Stoik shouted.

"Yeah, great," Hiccup wondered if his enthusiasm sounded false to anyone else, "I can't wait, I am so…"

* * *

><p><em>Secret cove, 1500 hours<em>

"…Leaving. We're leaving."

It had taken forever to lose the fan crowd; a little longer for him to assemble his things into a knapsack. There wasn't much – a change of clothes, his camera and tablet, some of his tools; no communicators, not even his headset, because he didn't want to call anyone ever again.

"Let's pack up! You and me are taking a little vacation…like forever." Maybe with him gone, they would give that final life-or-death test to someone who actually wanted it…like Astrid…

A click sounded over his head, like ammunition being loaded into a pistol. Hiccup jerked like he'd actually been shot and recoiled to look at the top of a nearby boulder – _well, think of the devil and there she is, sitting in the superior position…_ "Astrid! Wh-what are you doing here?" he tried to be cool even though his hands were rubbing his ears practically of their own accord.

"I want to know what's going on." Astrid had calmed down since the ring; given what the current situation was, that was bad. She slid down from the rock and got right in his face. "No one just _gets_ as good as you…_especially_ you."

Where was Toothless? This could get so many more kinds of bad very quickly.

"Start talking!"

What came out of his mouth was more like stammered mumbles.

"Are you training with someone?"

"Wha-who, training?"

"It better not involve _this_!" and she grabbed his safety harness, hoisting him partway off the ground by it.

"I know, I know, _this_ looks really bad, but…"

A rumble caught Astrid's attention and she threw Hiccup down, stepping over him as she started towards the source.

Hiccup scrambled back to his feet and started babbling. "You're right! You're right! I'm through with the lies…I've been making…outfits! So, you got me, it's time everyone knew…" Hiccup's fear for Toothless apparently trumped his fear of Astrid: he dared to get around in front of her, blocking her view, and take her hand to put it on his harness again. "Drag me back…here we go…"

He shouldn't have given her any handle on him. The minute her fingers closed on the straps she twisted her wrist, wrenching him to the ground. Then she kicked him over. "That's for the lies." Then her pistol connected with the side of his head when he tried to get up, "And _that's_ for everything else!"

That second noise from the more secluded corner of the cove was more obviously a roar. Astrid looked up as Hiccup hoisted himself back to his feet…

And there was Toothless, staring at Astrid with a feral look in his eyes.

Fortunately, Astrid's first instinct was not to open fire. Unfortunately, what she did instead was throw herself at Hiccup, knocking him back to the ground in an attempt to shelter him from the attack she thought was coming – which actually _caused_ the attack she expected, because Toothless thought she was attacking Hiccup.

Toothless was charging at Astrid in what looked like rage, Astrid was screaming at Hiccup to run as she brought her pistol up to aim at Toothless…two worlds on a collision course that would likely result in a lot of pain…

Hiccup knocked Astrid down, throwing her aim off and dragging her out of the Night Fury's path. Then he threw the pistol away and started flagging Toothless down.

"No, no, no, it's okay, it's okay…she's a friend…" Only when Toothless came back down to all fours did Hiccup turn his back, catching the dragon as he tried to shove his way forwards and telling Astrid as she got back up, "You just scared him."

"_I_ scared _him?_" Astrid screeched, incredulous and panicked; she sounded like she was demanding if he was out of his mind. Then she did a double-take. "Who…is 'him'?"

This first introduction could go a lot better…whatever, make do. "Uh…Astrid, Toothless; Toothless…Astrid," Hiccup said slowly, calmly, and firmly; he was hoping that maintaining a steady façade would keep things from escalating.

Toothless snarled at Astrid. He obviously wasn't ready to believe the "friend" thing – probably thought that if _she_ had found him netted in the woods, he'd be dead.

Astrid shook her head slowly, an expression of disbelief on her face. Disbelief…and something like betrayal. She wasn't seeing the miracle of a fully trained dragon; she was seeing a soldier who had decided to betray his own and side with the enemy.

_Which means her next course of action is…_

Astrid backed up a few paces – then turned and ran. She clearly didn't trust either of them to leave her alone while she made the call that would end them both, so she was putting some distance behind her first.

_Yup._ "Duh-du-duh, we're dead," Hiccup sighed.

Toothless made a grumbling noise and turned to walk away.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, where do you think you're going?"

* * *

><p>Astrid wasn't sure how far was safe. That was a Night Fury – it had to be – nothing else looked even remotely like that in the dragon profiles. Night Furies moved so fast that motion sensors were unreliable in picking them up, so she could only hope that the trees would slow it down. She couldn't call and run at the same time: she ran faster when she could keep her arms moving, so she couldn't even activate her communicator, and even if she could her breathing was coming too hard and too fast. No one would understand what she was saying.<p>

She vaulted a log – and didn't go back down. Claws were wrapped around her right shoulder, gripping hard enough to numb the hand, and their owner was lifting higher.

_This is it – I'm going to die now…_completely unashamed, Astrid started screaming like a far younger girl and scrabbling for any kind of handhold on the slick black scales. She didn't find anything to hold onto before it suddenly threw her into a tree. No, _onto_ a tree; she was way at the top branches of a very big pine, or fir (she wasn't clear on the difference). Before she could stabilize herself on those branches, the Night Fury joined her – landing on the main trunk and causing it to bow unsteadily, and jostling her so much that she wound up hanging under a branch like laundry put out to dry.

_Hiccup_ was up there. He was sitting on a dragon – on a _saddle_ on a Night Fury – when did he do this? _Any_ of this? And why did she even care?

"HICCUP," Astrid shrieked, "Get me _down_ from here!"

"You have to give me a chance to explain," Hiccup pleaded, looking considerably more apologetic and willing to help than the dragon did; the dragon seemed to be glaring at her.

"_I am _not_ listening to _anything_ you have to say!_" Astrid started to shimmy back towards the main trunk. If he wasn't getting her down, she'd get herself down…

"Then I won't speak; just let me show you."

Astrid looked at her surroundings a little more carefully. There weren't any easy branches for her to use as a ladder; she'd been dropped in the hardest tree to climb, _especially_ with a dragon sitting on it and bending the top. If she tried to climb down on her own, she would fall and likely kill herself.

"Please, Astrid."

No, she wouldn't kill herself; she might not even break anything. _He_ was determined to make his point, and he wouldn't let her hit the ground before he'd made it. How he was controlling the dragon, she couldn't figure out from here, but he would somehow get it to catch her. One way or another, she was going to make physical contact with a dragon again – which made the question whether or not she wanted to do this the easy way.

_Fine…_

Astrid heaved herself up with some difficulty. Once her feet were braced on top of the branch, she slowly reached out for the dragon.

It growled at her.

_Fine, be that way._ She reached for the saddle, smacking Hiccup's hand away, and levered herself onto the back of a Night Fury. She had to use the dragon's leg as a foothold, but it seemed to tolerate that. Barely.

"Now get me down," _And I am so not touching you._

"Toothless, down; gently," Hiccup said firmly, patting the dragon's head.

Massive black wings extended on either side of them, and the tree shifted as the dragon's position changed.

"See? Nothing to be afraid of," Hiccup told her over his shoulder.

* * *

><p>He wouldn't have had quite so much confidence if he could have seen Toothless's face. The speedy black dragon had had enough of a female piling abuse on <em>his<em> human, and was going to give her a taste of what he could _really_ do.

They didn't leave that tree gently. Toothless EXPLODED for the sky, startling Hiccup and making Astrid scream. She almost lost her seat; forgetting her resolution not to touch Hiccup, she grabbed for him and scrambled to wrap her arms and legs around his skinny torso while he shouted, "TOOTHLESS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? BAD DRAGON!" Finally he looked over his shoulder – at the girl who was much, _much_ closer – and added with a slight laugh, "He says he's not usually like this…"

Toothless closed a wing partway, causing them to bank sharply and lose altitude.

"Oh, no…"

Astrid started screaming again as they sideslipped down towards the sea.

Up and down, in and out of the waves they went; Hiccup couldn't do anything except what Toothless wanted him to do, or else they would crash down into the waves and not come up again. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure how well the false tail would hold up to saltwater – the wrecked plane he'd raided hadn't been a seaplane. If it got too wet, it would need maintenance that he couldn't supply.

"Toothless, what are you doing? We _need her_ to _like us!_"

Toothless shot for the sky again, this time switching to a barrel roll; Astrid's scream hit a pitch that sounded like her next step would be to start crying.

"And now the spinning…" Hiccup sighed in exasperation, "Thank you for nothing, you useless reptile."

As if that wasn't bad enough, Toothless suddenly stopped flapping altogether and started free-falling back toward the ocean, flipping and tossing like a pinwheel.

"ALL RIGHT," Astrid screamed in Hiccup's ear, "_I'm sorry_! I'm sorry! Just get me off this thing!"

Toothless must have heard her; must have understood, if not her words, then certainly the fact that she was no longer interested in killing him. He must, essentially, have understood something – because without Hiccup telling him anything he suddenly spread his wings and stopped their downward plunge. The sudden stop must have startled Astrid as much as everything else, because she yelped again.

Then…stillness.

* * *

><p>They weren't motionless, but they weren't rocking; it was like sailing – sailing on a calm pond with the gentlest of breezes. Toothless gradually lifted higher, his wings nearly motionless.<p>

Still trembling from what had felt like a near-death experience, Astrid slowly pried her eyes open. Then she sat up, staring in amazement at the clouds. Carefully, as nothing drastic happened, she unwound her legs from Hiccup's waist and moved her hands back to just his shoulders.

The clouds looked like a layer of velvet above her. Slowly, carefully, she lifted her hand to run her fingers through it. It was wet, cold…and impossibly light. It was wonderful; forgetting herself in her glee, she reached both hands to try and catch the clouds.

Then they lifted upward through the clouds, dancing through piles so big they looked like mountains and sea stacks. Far, far below was the sea; far away was anything resembling land. They were surrounded by nothing except…except the infinite sky. It was a feeling of total freedom that Astrid had never experienced before, and that Hiccup had only tasted a few times while practicing. Did the old-time pilots feel like this? Surely not – they were closed off from this vast space in their cockpits. Completely different. This was feeling like a dragon.

When they broke the clouds altogether, neither human could breathe for a moment. Night had fallen; it was the first time either of them had ever truly seen quite so many stars. There were always lights in town somewhere, obscuring the heavens – and even if one could get far enough away that there were no interfering lights, there wasn't a place on the island of Berk where one had a panoramic view of the world above. This…Astrid couldn't understand how Hiccup could even bear to land when surrounded by beauty like this, and Hiccup wondered how the dragons could stand leaving the sky.

Toothless coasted lower for a moment – and lights from below caught their attention. It was the army-village; he was practically mocking the sentries with how near he came, letting his passengers enjoy the look of their home from above.

No one saw them.

No one heard them.

Nothing disturbed them.

Hiccup grinned in the dark as he tried to map out the village in his mind and match it to what he saw below. Then for a moment he froze as Astrid's arms encircled his chest again. She wasn't trying to squeeze him to death like when she'd been afraid of her own demise; in fact – he dared a glance over his shoulder – she didn't even seem to be aware that she was holding him. She looked almost sweet.

_I'm…going to pretend that nothing's happening._ His grin came back, though, and he knew that he would always remember how near she was at this moment. Even if Astrid never rode with him again, they would both cherish this day: him, her, a dragon, and a heaven so near that it could be touched.

Toothless lifted them over the village and off into the dark again.

"All right, I admit it," Astrid finally said, breaking the silence with her sardonic reluctance, "This is pretty cool. It's…amazing." Then she glanced around Hiccup and added, a bit softer, "He's amazing."

What happened next was the triumph of Hiccup's entire crazy week: Astrid leaned over slightly and gently patted the side of Toothless's neck. _Astrid_ was giving a moment of affection to a _dragon_.

Hiccup wanted to sing, or something; he'd never felt so much like a champion before, not even now that everybody in town thought…

Everybody in town…

"So what now?"

Hiccup would like to say that Astrid's question had ruined his mood, but he'd already ruined it himself by remembering that everyone on Berk thought he was something that he would never be. She just brought things into the air.

"Hiccup, your final exam is tomorrow! You _know_ you're going to have to kill a…" she paused, remembering what she was riding, and put her mouth close to his ear as though Toothless would actually understand her words and take offense, "Kill a dragon."

"Don't remind me."

Suddenly Toothless went from merely coasting in the light mist – to flying with a purpose. This elicited yelps from both his passengers, who weren't expecting the speed to pick up.

"Toothless, what's happening?"

The mist was getting heavier the farther they flew, turning more into fog. Strange noises were coming out of it.

"Whoa, what is it?"

Suddenly they nearly crashed into another dragon – Monstrous Nightmare, by the looks of it. Hiccup and Astrid flattened themselves over Toothless, hoping it wouldn't attack. They all veered away from that dragon and nearly collided with a Nadder on the other side – and then they saw through the fog many, many more dragons. Nearly every flightworthy species in the files was there, and all flying in the same direction.

"Hiccup," Astrid whispered, "My headset's getting wonky – what's going on?"

"I don't know," Hiccup hissed back. Then he put his hand on Toothless's head. "Come on, bud, let's get out of here…"

Toothless shook the hand off. There was nothing for it but to keep flying.

Now that Hiccup was really looking around, he noticed that they all had some kind of load in their talons. Fish, poultry, things with hooves… "Looks like they're hauling in their kill," he breathed.

"Um…what does that make us?" Astrid whispered.

Hiccup didn't know how to answer that. He had faith in Toothless now – most of the time – but there was a strange energy to this air, and it seemed to have infected all the dragons _including_ Toothless. There was a feel to it…he couldn't place it, but he was sure he'd encountered it before. If only he could remember…

A couple of the dragons nearby suddenly looked in their direction, ears twitching. They growled, but made no move to attack.

_They're hearing…_ Hiccup listened himself, a little more carefully, and realized there was a buzzing noise behind his head. A second later he realized where it was coming from. "Astrid, turn off your headset – the dragons can hear it!"

Astrid's hand went to her head. "I – I don't remember how to turn it off!"

Bad timing for this… "Get rid of it before one of these things decides to attack!"

A second of scrabbling later Astrid leaned around Hiccup slightly and dropped the still-buzzing headset. It bounced off the head of a Zippleback, which snapped at it, and then vanished into the fog and presumably the waters below.

Astrid wrapped her arms around Hiccup's waist again, this time with a more uncertain air, just before the dragons all dove like old videos of fighter jets in formation.

Sea stacks came springing out of the fog; they looked rather like the stacks back home, except they were much bigger and somehow more sinister. Dragons wove in and out among them, straight towards something else that rose out of the fog…

_Is that a volcano?_

It was something like one, in any case – but man, it was huge. And even scarier than the stacks; was this where the dragons lived? How could they stand to live in a place that looked like a corner of Hell brought to the surface?

Hiccup and Astrid both screamed as Toothless plunged into a dark hole in the volcano's surface. They couldn't help it. At the speed they were going, they were both positive that any second the dragons were going to crash into a wall.

Then the hole opened up…

It looked even more like Hell on the inside, and there were dragons _everywhere_. It really was the nest.

"What my dad wouldn't give to find _this_," Hiccup breathed.

Toothless swooped over a huge fiery pit and landed on a ledge behind a pillar. Other dragons did the same type of maneuver, except as they were above the pit they released their loads.

"Well," Hiccup sighed sarcastically, "It's satisfying to know that all of our food is being dumped down a hole…"

"They're not eating any of it…" Astrid said slowly, sounding perplexed.

One last dragon came flapping in: a Gronkle. It was either very old or just plain lazy, because it was bobbing around like its wings were giving it trouble in supporting its weight. Then it coughed up one tiny fish into the pit and started trying to fly quickly away.

There was a loud rumble, like thunder, from the flames – and a massive set of jaws lifted up to slam shut around the whole Gronkle.

Hiccup gasped.

"_What…is that_?" Astrid whispered, sounding too terrified to even start screaming.

Now Hiccup recognized that energy that had been driving the dragons; what was causing them now to creep as far away from the pit as they could go even though the giant head was sinking back into the flames. It was the same energy that had propelled Toothless out of the nets and onto Hiccup, that day in the woods. That hadn't been rage – Hiccup had seen Toothless's rage later. _That_ had been a terror so great that he was willing to do anything to ensure his continued survival.

_Fear._

The giant head came up again. It didn't have any discernible nose, but was sliding its massive tongue in and out of its mouth in a slow-motion imitation of a snake – and the end was shaggy enough that it probably carried a lot of receptors for gathering scents. That head turned until one giant eye was trained in the general direction of their hiding place…

_It could smell something that wasn't a dragon, and knew that one of its scaly subjects hadn't supplied an offering._

Hiccup leaned over Toothless's head. "All right, bud, we've got to get out of here – NOW!"

Toothless leaped for freedom – scant inches ahead of those heavily-toothed jaws crashing shut where he had been. Nor was he the only dragon making a getaway: there was a regular tornado of dragons escaping the wrath of that – that whale of a thing…a Titan-Wing Zippleback wasn't quite so lucky and was practically bitten in half, inadvertently saving their lives by giving the monster something to chew on.

* * *

><p>"Was that a dragon?" Astrid gasped.<p>

"If it was, it was a deeper-sea dragon than anything we've ever seen before," Hiccup replied. "Did you see its shape? It wasn't really built for movement on land – unless it has legs in there somewhere that I missed. But it was super streamlined, and its windpipe didn't open anywhere on what we saw of its face so…"

"What _we_ saw? How on earth did you manage to _analyze_?"

"It's what I do…anyway, if it has lungs at all they open up someplace on the back of its neck; that's a creature that never leaves the water if it can help it." Hiccup took a deep breath. "And this part sounds really crazy, but I think that thing was…_using_ those dragons' fear. Forcing them mentally to…no, that's too weird…"

"No, no, it totally makes sense – it's like a giant beehive! They're the workers, and that's their queen; it controls them." Finally they landed in the cove, and Astrid sprang off. "Let's find your dad!"

"No! No…" Hiccup jumped off himself and got in Astrid's way. "No, not yet, they'll…kill…Toothless. No, we have to think this through carefully."

Astrid looked incredulously at Hiccup, as if wondering if she'd heard him right without the headset. "Hiccup, we just discovered the _dragons' nest_. What we've been searching for since the ancestors' squadron first got stranded here. And now you want to keep it a secret? Wha – to protect your _pet dragon_, are you _serious_?"

Hiccup paused, halfway between Astrid and Toothless. Then he turned back to her, feeling more serious than he ever had in his entire life. "Yes." He didn't stammer, didn't offer any explanation; if she still didn't understand after all that happened today, nothing he said would make it clear.

Astrid's disbelief melted into something that wasn't quite awe, but wasn't far from it. This was a side of Hiccup she'd never seen before; then she wondered if she'd ever _seen_ Hiccup before. How could she have let his slight stature blind her to the general's heart he carried?

She still didn't quite understand why…just _why_. There was something binding Hiccup to this Night Fury, something that she couldn't comprehend right now and possibly never would. But…for right now…seeing his resolve was enough.

"Okay; so what do we do?"

That made Hiccup slump a little; he didn't have a game plan. "Just…give me until tomorrow. I'll figure something out." He had to; somehow, this had to stop.

"Okay." Then Astrid's fist connected hard with his shoulder. "That's for kidnapping me."

Toothless looked up briefly from the drink he was getting. Hiccup looked back at him with an exasperated shrug, and he twitched his head as if saying, "Not my problem, you figure it out."

Astrid fussed with her hair a little; it wouldn't stay neatly out of her face without at least the headset, the way she'd styled it. Then she grabbed him by the collar (as he cringed, expecting to get hit again) and surprised him with a quick peck on the cheek. "That's for…everything else." Then she was gone, before he could quite process what had just happened.

_Well, well…the mighty Astrid Hofferson has a sweet side._ Hiccup smiled a bit at that; "sweet" wasn't a common state for the wannabe Valkyries that wandered Berk.

Toothless came up next to him and stared at him, asking…what, exactly?

"What are you looking at?" Hiccup demanded, a little defensively.

Toothless turned away to stare after Astrid, with an expression on his dragon face like he was thinking, "Humans are weird."

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ I wanted to use my version of the dragons that come big enough to eat Titan-Wing dragons; only ones like that are sea-serpents. This "Red Death" is more like the Green and Purple Deaths from the bookverse HTTYD, or the Screaming Death from Defenders of Berk. If the chapters go like I think they will, you'll get to see this for yourself in about four days._


	12. Chapter 12

**_Author's note: _**_I looked over the chapter lengths I had and was astonished to see that Chapter 11 was over 5,000 words long. That's as long as some fanfictions! Don't worry (or be disappointed) though, I don't plan on _trying_ to beat that. If it happens, it happens. We'll see._

* * *

><p><em>Arena, 1300 hours<em>

The roaring from the crowds was incredible. Everyone was chanting Hiccup's name, wanting to see him spill blood. General Stoik stepped up onto the podium and opened his graduation-day speech with a joke.

"Well, I can show my face in public again!" He let them have their laugh for a minute and then waved them to silence. "If someone told me that in a few short weeks Hiccup would go from being…well…_Hiccup_…" more laughs greeted that; they all were acknowledging that the "old" Hiccup defied adequate description, "To placing first in dragon training, well, I'd have thrown him in an institution or shipped him off, for fear he'd gone mad! And you know it!" Agreement roared from the audience until Stoik waved them down again. "But…here we are. No one is more surprised…or more proud…than I am. Today my boy becomes a soldier; today, he becomes one of us!"

The cheers hit their loudest.

Hiccup was listening over his headset, in the tunnel before the arena. He would be feeling on top of the world if everything his father thought out there was true; instead he felt about as low as an anglerfish.

Astrid came up behind him. "Be careful with that dragon." She was wearing her helmet, though with the faceplate up; her intent was to keep her head down until she figured out how to _discreetly_ replace her headset.

"It's not the dragon I'm worried about." And that was definitely saying something about who he had really become in a few short weeks: he'd gone from dragons being the biggest worry, to dragons being nothing to worry about.

"What are you going to do?"

"Put an end to this; I have to try." Hiccup took a deep breath and turned around. "Astrid…if something…goes wrong…" it was obvious what kind of wrong he meant, "Just make sure they don't find Toothless."

"I will. Just…promise me it won't go wrong."

Gobber's voice echoed over Hiccup's headset. "Gobber to Hiccup, it's time; go knock 'em dead."

Hiccup sighed and put his helmet on before walking through the doors. He wished he could have promised Astrid something…but…how could he honestly look her in the eyes and say that nothing would go wrong? There were far too many variables that could make this day much worse than it already was, and not enough of them were under his control.

The arena was completely empty save for a weapons rack. He approached, took a shield…and, after a moment's thought, the smallest pistol that rack had. Then he turned and hoisted his shield, took a deep breath, and said the hardest words he'd ever expected to say.

"I'm ready."

The final pen came unlocked.

This was the one dragon that had never been released for the students. As far as _training_ was concerned, Hiccup was going in blind. But he knew what it was.

A Monstrous Nightmare burst through that door, its skin already aflame. It charged up on the chain-link ceiling and sent a burst of flame out to the harbor – and every soldier in the way parted ranks like the Red Sea. After a little more scurrying on the chains its skin doused, revealing that it was a bold red. Then it seemed to notice that it wasn't alone in the ring and dropped back down to face Hiccup.

_That would have actually been pretty cool if it spent the entire match ignoring me… _Well, it wasn't going to happen now. The good news was that nothing had riled the dragon up further and if anything it had calmed down a little; time for the only part of this he had actually planned.

Hiccup slowly backed away, bending down to put his pistol and shield on the ground. He then lifted his free hands as he straightened. "It's okay…it's okay…"

The dragon seemed to actually hear him some; it growled a bit, as though contemplating that this faceless creature was the first such to actually make a quiet noise instead of attempting a battle cry or simply being deadly silent.

Hiccup slowly pulled his helmet off, letting the dragon see his whole face. Then, not at all reluctant, he tossed the helmet aside. "I'm not one of them."

There were gasps from the crowd. His father's voice echoed over the comm.-system. "Stop the fight."

"No," Hiccup called himself, "I need you all to see this." He reached out his hand until it was just inches away from the Nightmare's nose.

The dragon…didn't lie down, but it certainly showed no sign of attacking. It sniffed his hand, seeming to consider pressing its nose into it like Toothless had – God, that seemed so long ago; could it smell that he had touched other dragons in peace?

"They're not what we think they are; we don't have to kill them." Just keep talking; stay calm, keep it clear. As long as nobody cut him off…

"I SAID STOP THE FIGHT!" Stoik bellowed, causing a screech over the system.

And if there was one thing Hiccup had learned just the previous night, it was that the dragons could hear the noises made by the headsets and were bothered by anything static-y. When Hiccup's made that horrible sound…

The Monstrous Nightmare went mad.

Hiccup snatched his hand away right before the dragon snapped for it, and then he had to run from the flames, screaming without a thought for his dignity.

_Why, Dad? I _had_ it! Couldn't you see that I had everything under control? Are things really _not_ under control unless someone is handling them the way _you_ would?_ He managed to grab his shield back up – only to have the blasted thing wrenched from his grasp by the rampaging dragon before he could even get set.

"HICCUP!"

Astrid! Where was she? Hiccup didn't dare look around…and then he didn't have to, as a shotgun flew like a thrown hammer and impacted the side of the Nightmare's muzzle.

That distracted it for a minute; unfortunately, it also redirected the dragon's fury towards Astrid, and it was her turn to run like crazy.

_Thanks for not shooting it, though…I think._ Were things so bad that killing this dragon was the only way to get any human out alive?

Stoik opened the door and bellowed for them to run his way. Astrid got there first by virtue of her slightly-longer legs and the fact that at that instant she was a bit closer to the door. Hiccup ran for the cover – and had to backtrack as fire raked the doorframe and nearly hit him. He ran the other way, no longer sure what his game plan was…

And for the third time in his life, he found himself pinned down by a dragon. Hiccup was pretty sure he'd used up all of his luck by this point, though; where Toothless had mysteriously decided not to strike and Gobber had been there to save him from the Gronkle, this dragon really was out for blood and no one was near enough to rescue him.

Another shriek filled the air; this one wasn't over the system. An explosion ripped a hole through the chains, and suddenly the arena was full of smoke and dust. For a long moment, no one could see what was going on – least of all Hiccup – and then suddenly the Nightmare went rolling into the open with an angry black dragon clawing at it.

"Night Fury," Gobber gasped, looking astonished.

As the dragons' beating wings cleared the fog away, Hiccup could be seen sitting up; he was a little worse for wear, with a spectacular slash nearly cleaving his breastplate in half, but he was definitely still alive.

Toothless made sure that when he and the Nightmare broke off their close combat, he stayed between Hiccup and the other guy. With roars and snapping teeth, he communicated in the clearest way he knew how: _You are not getting near this human, for he is mine_.

After a few attempts the Nightmare got the message, and it slinked back in the general direction of its pen. Only then did Hiccup scramble to his feet and rush over to Toothless.

"Okay, thanks bud, now you have to get out of here…"

Toothless wasn't moving; he was convinced that the soldiers springing down into the arena from the walls were more threats for Hiccup.

_How on earth do I explain to a dragon that _he's_ the one in danger?_ "Go, go!"

Toothless's attention suddenly riveted on a big man rushing towards them – oh no…

"No, no, no, Dad, you're only making it worse!"

Toothless slammed two other soldiers away from him and pounced Stoik down.

"Toothless, stop," how late was too late? He could hear Toothless readying his fire…

For the second time in as many days, Hiccup's two worlds were colliding – but this time it looked like someone really would die. _No, please…_he felt like he was being torn apart by something that could never be…

"NO!" Fortunately for everyone else, some corner of Hiccup's brain remembered to have his hands move the mouthpiece up; they didn't need a repeat of what happened with the Nightmare.

Finally, Toothless stopped. He closed his mouth on the fire he never used and lowered down to look at Hiccup.

Hiccup dearly wanted to tell him – again – to run. But he knew with a horrible sinking feeling that it was far too late for that: there were too many soldiers between the dragon and the exit, and somebody would get seriously hurt.

Soldiers dragged Toothless off of Stoik and started trussing him up before he could even think of thrashing to escape; by the time he tried, he'd already been bound too securely to make good.

Hiccup snapped. Astrid had to hold him back as he tried to rush the soldiers, babbling desperately for them not to hurt the dragon.

Stoik considered the rifle that was offered to him. Then he considered the dragon. And, in a rare display of mercy, he pushed the weapon away.

"Put it with the others."


	13. Chapter 13

_Interrogation room, 1330 hours_

"I should have known…"

"Dad…"

"I should have seen the signs…"

"Sir?"

This conversation wasn't going very well. Of course, when one party is handcuffed and nearly fell on his face on the way through the door, it's a very safe bet that the conversation wasn't going to go well – especially when the other party is the reason party one nearly fell on his face.

Stoik rounded on Hiccup. "We had a deal!"

"I know we did, but that was before I…" Hiccup groaned and rubbed at his ears. "It's all so messed up…" The General had taken his headset away; he didn't know _how_ bad that was, only that it was yet another mark against this talk having a good outcome for him.

"So everything in that ring…was a trick? A lie…"

The accusation stung. Hiccup wanted to protest that he'd never lied, never pretended to be what everyone thought he was – but he didn't even bother trying. First of all, his dad wouldn't even hear it; second, he'd certainly lied by omission when he never corrected anyone's assumptions. He'd never really dealt with anything: he'd been so focused on helping Toothless and getting through the rest of the day quickly that he never even saw the axe until it was swinging for his head, too late to duck.

He deeply regretted that now. He could have been building allies, looking for people who were a little more flexible in their views – heck, he could have told Fishlegs about Toothless…although maybe not first. Fishlegs loved dragon trivia and would probably have adored the opportunity to study a mostly-tame creature up close, but he couldn't keep a secret.

Whatever…it was way too late now, and all he could do was scramble after the shattered pieces of his life. "I screwed up, I should have told you before now, I…look, take this out on me, be mad at me, but please, just don't hurt Toothless!"

Stoik stared at Hiccup as though wondering – no, like he knew – that Hiccup had lost his mind. "The dragon? That's what you're worried about? Not the people he almost killed?"

"He was just protecting me!" Hiccup leaped to Toothless's defense, "He's not dangerous!" It wasn't fair accusing a creature that couldn't explain itself.

"THEY'VE KILLED HUNDREDS OF US!"

Oh, he was bringing the rest of the dragons into this? Two could do that. "AND WE'VE KILLED THOUSANDS OF THEM!"

Under other circumstances Hiccup might have been rather proud of himself: he'd startled his father the General into silence. The follow-up, that headshake, was a lot less of a good sign though.

"They defend themselves, that's all! They raid us because they have to: if they don't bring enough food back, they'll be eaten themselves! There's something on their island…I think it's some kind of…"

Stoik turned suddenly, fixing Hiccup with all his attention. "Their island? You've found the nest?"

"Did I say nest?" Hiccup asked guiltily. This conversation was going downhill even faster than he thought.

"Where is it? How did you find it, Private?"

Old habit brought Hiccup to a panicked attention. "Sir, I didn't, sir, Toothless did; only a dragon can find the nest, sir. It's probably something caused by…" he trailed off at the look on his father's face – and suddenly realized what he was thinking. "Oh no, no, please, it's not what you think! You don't know what you're up against! It's like nothing you've ever seen! Sir, I promise you, you can't win this one!" His father was leaving; against all his better judgment Hiccup dashed around the table and grabbed at the larger man's arm with his bound hands. "DAD, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE WILL YOU PLEASE JUST LISTEN TO ME?"

Stoik's elbow snapped out and caught Hiccup in the chest, sending him sprawling. Then he looked back with a dark glare, his gaze momentarily caught by Hiccup's sleeve. He came back long enough to take the boy's insignia and rip it off roughly.

"You've thrown your lot in with them. You're not a soldier; you're not my son."

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. Hiccup would wake up in the hospital and find that it was all a nightmare, and that he was actually badly injured and missing a few body parts. He certainly felt like something was missing now: like his heart had been ripped from his chest as the insignia was ripped from his sleeve.

He might have felt better – a little – if he could have seen the great General Stoik rock back on his heels as he closed the door and grasped that he was now alone in the world; his wife was gone, his parents had been killed long ago, and he'd just disowned his only son. He recovered quickly, though, and started giving orders over his communicator for the ships to be readied again – with a special cargo this time.

* * *

><p><em>Harbor, 1415 hours<em>

The last of the fleet was loaded up with every soldier that could safely fit and all the weapons they could load. Toothless was muzzled and immobilized on a platform with a heavy wooden collar and iron hoops before then being transported to the lead ship.

Hiccup watched from the stairs, every movement another twist to the knife in his chest. He kept telling himself that he should go down and stop them…he never moved. It wasn't the handcuffs that nobody had bothered to remove, although that was certainly a deterrent from actually trying anything; he simply had no fight left. He was watching his entire home pack up and sail off to their deaths, and he couldn't make himself do anything to stop them.

His father – he knew he'd been disowned, but he couldn't think of the General without remembering the DNA link – looked up once and saw him. If Hiccup was hoping that his presence would make the big man feel guilty and call off the suicide mission, it didn't happen. He turned, marched to the helm, and in a few minutes they were off. It wasn't long before they were out of sight, Toothless with them.

Hiccup seriously considered jumping; he was high enough that hitting the water would be a terrible shock to his system, and he certainly couldn't swim very well with his wrists handcuffed. Before he could actually make a decision, Astrid came up on his right. He noted – before looking glumly away – that she'd found a new headset somewhere during the confusion.

For a long, empty moment they both just stood there. Finally Astrid's voice broke the silence.

"It's a mess. You must feel horrible. You've lost everything – your father, your squadron, your best friend…"

"Thank you for summing that up." They were Hiccup's first words since the crushing blow in the interrogation room. He sighed. "Why couldn't I have killed that dragon when I found him in the woods? It would have been better, for everyone…"

"Yup, the rest of us would have done it," Astrid put in matter-of-factly. Then she looked at him. "So why didn't you?"

_Ah, Astrid…if you only knew how many times since the interrogation I've wondered that…_

"Why didn't you?"

Oh, she actually wanted him to say something. "I don't know…I couldn't."

"That's not an answer."

Hiccup turned to glare at her. "Why is this so important to you all of a sudden?"

Astrid got in his face. "Because I want to remember what you say right now," the implication being that he'd better say something.

"Oh, for the love of…" Hiccup tried to gesture and was hampered by the cuffs. "I was a coward! I was weak! I wouldn't kill a dragon!"

Astrid's attention was riveted on the anger that was mounting – it was better than the moping from earlier – and on a particular word in his sentence. "You said 'wouldn't' that time."

"Whatever! I wouldn't! Three hundred years, and I'm the first soldier who wouldn't kill a dragon!" He turned away, wanting the conversation to be over.

He felt a tiny bit better, though, having gotten all that off his chest.

Astrid was quiet for a long moment. Then, "First to ride one, though," she said softly.

Hiccup's head lifted. That was…an interesting point. It was a strange coward who was then brave enough to fly. And as for weak…anyone could kill, but who was truly strong enough to reach out a helping hand _for an enemy?_

Those eyes in the woods…

"I wouldn't kill him…" Hiccup turned slowly, feeling his way towards an answer he couldn't quite see, "Because he looked as frightened as I was. I looked at him…" his eyes raised back to Astrid's, "And I saw myself."

Astrid seemed to see more in his words than he did; she looked impressed, and rather like he'd answered more questions than just the one she'd asked.

_Did _that_ end the…_

"I bet he's really frightened now."

_Guess it didn't._ She was probably right, though…

"What are you going to do about it?"

Hiccup shrugged self-deprecatingly, "Eh…probably something stupid."

Astrid lifted an eyebrow. "Good, but you've already done that."

Well, yeah…he was stupid enough to think that training the dragon he was supposed to kill would…

Training the…

Hiccup's eyes caught with a very different kind of fire, and he lifted his hand. "Then something crazy," he replied, before turning and running up the stairs as fast as he could go.

"That's more like it," Astrid said to his departing form. Then she tapped on her headset, a delighted grin lighting her face. "Did you guys all get that last part? Hiccup's back in the action and has a plan; now who's going to take a stand with him?"


	14. Chapter 14

_Hell's Gate_

General Stoik gave one last instruction over the radio before shutting it all the way off. "We have to maintain radio silence until we reach the island, so stay within shouting distance." Then he glared into the fog. The dragons would pay for all they stole, all they killed…

"Listen, sir," Gobber said, coming up behind him, "I overheard some talk and some of the other soldiers are wondering just what it is we're up to here. Not me, of course – I know you're always the man with the plan…but some, not me, are wondering if in fact there is a plan at all, and what it might be." Gobber was pitifully transparent: _he_ wanted to know if there was even a plan. Face him with dragons on solid ground, even at night, and he was the bravest captain ever to take up arms – but put him on a ship in heavy fog and he started having dreadful nervous attacks.

"Find the nest and take it; we'll fill in the details once we're there."

"Ah; send them running. Yeah, that's nice and simple…"

Stoik held out a silencing hand to Gobber, his attention suddenly riveted on the Night Fury. Up until that moment it had been standing there despondently, head hanging until its nose was brushing the board it was strapped to. Then its ears had started to vibrate and it was twitching this way and that as if being attacked by flies.

_So it begins…_ General Stoik took the wheel and kept his eyes carefully on that dragon.

All at once its head popped up, its eyes wide, and it stared intently to the left. Stoik turned to port – and they sailed past a large sea stack. The dragon swung the other way, and Stoik followed suit as soldiers bellowed from the back to the other ships which direction they were turning next.

They were sailing into the unknown…

* * *

><p><em>Arena<em>

Hiccup had managed to open one cuff but not the other, so now he had his hands free but the restraint still dangled from his left wrist. Never mind…he had other things to worry about; like what Toothless must be going through. It was absolutely impossible, given the size of that thing, that their weapons could mark it fast enough to bring it down before it wiped them all out. And sooner or later, it would find and kill Toothless; even if he could fly on his own, restrained like that he'd never be able to get away on his own.

And what if, against all odds, they did succeed? They would kill Toothless themselves, and the only question would be if they did it there or waited until they got home to drive one last stake through Hiccup's heart.

"If what you're wanting is to get eaten, I'd definitely go with the Gronkle."

Hiccup turned around, startled out of his dark musings by Fishlegs's voice, and saw all of his classmates standing there. By the look of things, Astrid had assembled them for him – and in fact, she'd even found his headset.

Tuffnut elbowed his way past Ruffnut and got practically right in Hiccup's face. "You were wise to seek help from the world's most deadly weapon."

"Um…"

"It's me," was the last thing Tuffnut managed to say before Snotlout shoved him out of the way.

"I _love_ this plan!" Snotlout said enthusiastically, pumping his fists.

Ruffnut shoved him aside so violently that he punched himself in the face before Hiccup could squeak out more than, "I…didn't…"

"You're crazy." At first that seemed like a bad thing, until she smiled slyly and practically purred, "I like that…"

Hiccup had to let out a sigh of relief as Astrid dragged Ruffnut away. This was a whole new type of popularity, one that had little resemblance to what he had before.

"So…" Astrid slung the headset around Hiccup's neck, "What _is_ the plan?"

Hiccup looked them over again, suddenly noticing something he hadn't actually seen before: they were all armed to the teeth. Handguns of every type were tucked into every available pocket each of them had, and he had no doubt all of them were fully loaded; each also had a baby rocket launcher slung on their backs, and they _had_ to have raided the armory against regulations to get those. They evidently had figured out somewhere between here and wherever Astrid found them that they were going into war and wanted to be ready.

"Well…" Hiccup began with a slow smile, "It's nice that you're all fully armed, and we probably will need all the firepower we can carry…" not like he was expecting it to mark that monster, "But for step one, you'll need to put all those weapons down."

* * *

><p><em>Hell's Gate<em>

The ships sailed past the wreck of another ship – one that had been there a while, by the look of it. Its shiny finish was long gone, and barnacles and similar creatures were growing all over it. The nameplate was unreadable, either through the passage of time or the direct intervention of a dragon. It was not the most encouraging of sights.

"Oh…I was wondering where that went." Gobber, of course, chose to take refuge in humor to hide his own anxiety.

Their ship just scraped the side of the wreck as they turned.

Suddenly the Night Fury started thrashing – or trying to. It was too well restrained to do much more than rattle its bindings.

"Stay low," Stoik called, "And get ready."

Suddenly they beached.

Stoik walked to the prow and looked up. They were on the shore of what looked like a volcanic island. It was a desolate place, and it looked completely vacant – except that he caught a glimpse of a dragon's tail as it hurried out of sight.

"We're here."

Stoik jumped down from the deck onto the beach. It wasn't covered by sand, but by pebbles – magnifying the sound of his movements rather than muffling them. Not like, if the dragons could communicate with each other, they didn't all know already that soldiers had come.

* * *

><p><em>Arena<em>

Hiccup slowly backed away from the Monstrous Nightmare's cage.

A reasonable course of action, except for the part where the dragon in question was following him with its nose right under his hand. That pushed things up into insanity.

Fishlegs was holding very, very still, as if convinced that if he didn't move the dragon wouldn't notice him. The twins looked impressed as only they could – that _Hiccup_ was controlling the deadliest known dragon. Astrid simply tossed her hair, completely cool about the whole situation; she'd seen Hiccup in action before. Snotlout…

Snotlout was probably the most nervous private in the ring. He looked at that blood-red dragon with the long claws and remembered how a few hours before it had tried to kill Hiccup and Astrid. He was antsy…he really would feel better with a weapon in his hand…

Astrid smacked his shoulder as he reached down for a stray pistol. "Uh-uh."

Hiccup led the Nightmare straight toward Snotlout. Somehow, it seemed like they would be a good fit. He would have liked to give the deadliest dragon they had to Astrid, but the sense he got from this thing was that it had more respect for muscle size – and Astrid, though strong, wasn't bulky. Fishlegs wasn't a personality match for this thing, which _enjoyed_ being in the ring with something to fight.

"Wait – what…" Snotlout babbled – loudly – as Hiccup tried to guide his hand to the dragon's snout. Hiccup had to look away to recapture his hand when Snotlout snatched it away.

"Shh, relax…it's okay; it's okay…"

Chest heaving, Snotlout allowed Hiccup to guide his large hand over to take the place of the little hand that had been keeping the dragon still during the "discussion." Only after a couple seconds of nothing happening did Snotlout really take a proper breath.

Hiccup could see it; he'd wondered if he'd be able to. As the fear subsided, Snotlout opened up for a connection to be forged between himself and the dragon. It wouldn't be as strong just-formed as what Hiccup had with Toothless (and perhaps it would never be: the Nightmare didn't need Snotlout to survive, so there wasn't that anchor), but it would be enough.

Snotlout could hardly believe it. He, Private Snotlout Jorgenson, was controlling a _Monstrous Nightmare_ with just a hand on its face. If Hiccup hadn't showed him how to…wait, Hiccup was leaving. His confidence gave way to fear, although not as strong as it had been when the dragon was first led out.

"Where are you going?" he called, not daring to turn his eyes away from the fiery beast.

Hiccup dug several coils of rope out of a box. "You're going to need something to hold on." Toothless had a saddle, but there wasn't time to make more.

Tuffnut held up a hand. "Uh, how strong are these dragons exactly? Because I think all six of us would be kind of heavy."

That was…surprisingly perceptive of Tuffnut…

"Yeah…" Fishlegs added doubtfully, "Six humans, even adolescents, would be a bit much for one Broad-Wing to…" his eyes widened as he suddenly realized what was coming next. "Oh…"

Hiccup grinned, for a moment looking as crazy as the twins. Then he hit all the cage switches at once.

The Nightmare twitched but didn't freak out as the Nadder, the Gronkle, the Zippleback and the Terror all burst out of their cages, looking around in some confusion. They were never all released at once to fight.

Astrid stepped right up to the challenge, extending her hand out towards the Deadly Nadder. It clucked a moment, considering her and the fact that she was being nonthreatening; then it willingly put its large nose in her hand.

"I'll be riding with you, Astrid," Hiccup called. "With those wings the Nadder would have the easiest time flying double, and we have to get there fast."

He didn't know quite why he felt like time was closing in on them; just that it was.

Fishlegs ended up with the Gronkle; they were rather well-suited for each other in terms of bulk and personality. The twins argued over which of them got the Zippleback and which got the Terror – until Astrid got her Nadder to let out a good loud screech. And while Tuffnut rolled around on the floor dramatizing about being hurt, Ruffnut claimed the Zippleback. The Terror half-slithered over to Tuffnut and sniffed him curiously.

"Um…okay…you're not going to rip me up again, are you?"

It rumbled at him, as if answering in the negative. Maybe it was.

"All right then…"

In a few minutes all were re-armed, mounted and in the air. Even carrying double, the Nadder was able to take the lead.

Hiccup pumped his fist skywards and shouted, "To the nest!"

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ Just clarifying for the readers: all the dragons held hostage in Berk's arena were Broad-Wing; this makes them all, including the Terrible Terror, about the size of horses._


	15. Chapter 15

_Dragon's Nest_

While other soldiers fortified their positions with spikes in the ground, Stoik started drawing attack formations on a patch of ground that had had the pebbles cleared from it. The army would divide into three groups, all coming at the same side of the mountain from different angles.

"When we crack this mountain open, all Hell is going to break loose," he warned the captains who were watching him.

"In my undies," Gobber interjected, "Good thing I brought extra."

Stoik ignored the joke and turned back towards the mountain. "No matter how this ends…this ends today!" He looked around carefully to see if all the cannons were in place; then he gave the signal to open fire.

Soon the air was full of explosions as cannonballs rushed for the wall. It didn't take much of a barrage for a hole to open; the force of Man was greater than anything except a natural disaster.

They'd known it was coming, and it still took them by surprise: before the smoke and dust even began to settle, dragons of every known size and species rushed out of that hole. Soldiers scrambled for their lighter weapons, only to discover something strange…not only were the dragons not holding still long enough for a good aim to be taken at any one target, they weren't stopping for a battle at all. Completely ignoring the soldiers, most of the Tidal dragons went plunging into the sea, the Boulders and Stokers vanished underground and didn't come up again, and the rest aimed for the sky as if they couldn't shake the island's dust from their talons fast enough.

They were evacuating.

Gobber stared at the departing horde, stunned. "Is that it?" Then he shrugged and bellowed at the army, "We did it!"

Cheers rose, but Stoik didn't join in. He was looking at the hole that was the departing point of the diggers. He didn't trust that they'd actually fled, and strongly suspected they were readying a counterattack.

"This isn't over," he barked, getting their attention. "Hold your ranks; mind the ground beneath you, those burrowers will be coming back up any minute now!"

There was silence for a long moment. Then a sound echoed out of the mountain – a sound like none of the soldiers had ever heard before. It was like the crash of a giant wave against a coast, bringing death and destruction with it.

No known dragon sounded like that; no known dragon was big enough to have a voice that size.

It could just be the acoustics…

Acoustics or not, _something_ was coming through the mountain and causing it to collapse. "Fall back!" Stoik shouted, taking his own advice as he herded his men away from the mountain. How clever were these dragons, to make an attack that looked and sounded like the world's record-breaking largest dragon was coming? Well, they were shortly going to find out that Berk's fighters weren't fooled…

"Oh, my Maker – what _is_ that?" Gobber shouted, looking absolutely astonished. Stoik turned back to look.

It _wasn't_ an army of diggers: it was one creature, the size of a bloated whale, hauling itself out of the mountain on two large fin-like limbs and the writhing coils of the rest of its body. It was a disgusting color, like dried blood, and it had no visible ears and no nose. It didn't roar, exactly; if it were a much smaller dragon, that sound would be a hiss. Its tongue swept the air, vibrating in time with the noise.

_Lord, help us…_ "Open fire – use the cannons!" Stoik bellowed.

The cannons bellowed in response, but as the shots broke upon the swollen body he could see that it would be no use. Whatever it was, its hide was leveled up along with its size to be an improvement over even the Titan-Wing dragons. _They_ could be wounded by cannons and rocket launchers, but not a great deal less; _this_ was taking cannonballs to the ribs, belly, and even the face and it wasn't even flinching. However, it did sweep its massive head down low and snap at the cannons as soldiers scattered, eliminating the irritations by destroying their source.

The soldiers rushed back towards the ships. They never got there before the giant dragon let out a stream of…some sort of fluid…that was ignited as it passed between the horny protrusions hooking inwards at the ends of its jaws like a strange beak. Brilliant gold, smoky fire _poured_ over the ships and the water between them and the shore, cutting off the only true escape route.

Toothless struggled frantically, trying to break out of his restraints. His ship was on fire, and although he was fire-resistant, he didn't want to still be there when the ship went down.

"Smart, that one," Gobber commented.

"I was a fool…" those were the hardest words to ever come out of Stoik's mouth – but all he could hear was Hiccup's voice, crying that they didn't know what they were up against and that they "couldn't win this one."

_He'd been here on that Night Fury. He saw that…that Red Death. He tried to warn me, and I didn't listen. And now, we are all going to die._

"Assemble the men on the far side of the island."

"I think I'll stay, just in case you're thinking of doing something crazy."

This wasn't time for insubordination…Stoik turned around. "I can give the men a few minutes of time if I give that thing something to hunt." He started to leave when Gobber grabbed his wrist.

"Then I can double that time."

Well…what were old friends for? They rushed the Red Death together, bellowing at it as loud as they could. Stoik grabbed a stake and threw it as hard as he could, hoping that the under edges of its chin were as sensitive as the corresponding points on a smaller dragon's. It seemed that they were, as the Red Death swiveled in their direction. Its head swung heavily back and forth between Stoik and Gobber, as if trying to decide who to eat first.

Stoik had no fear left. This was his fault, and if he died atoning for it, so be it.

Suddenly an explosion went off _behind the dragon's head_, and it jerked and shook its head as if to clear it.

_That was a rocket launcher!_ But there was no smoke trail from the ground… Come to think, no rocket launcher could fire at that trajectory from the ground. Where on earth did that come from?

He got his answer the next minute as five dragons flew down from someplace behind the Red Death. All were Broad-Wings; all had human riders. The Nadder had two riders, and one was just sitting back down properly and adjusting a rocket launcher to point carefully up.

"Dragon Riders, this is Nadder One, sound off!" a thin, familiar voice echoed over the communication system.

_Was that _Hiccup_?_ All the riders were fully armored, helmets and all, so there was no looking up and just _seeing_ who was up there. But cranking up the magnifiers, Stoik could see that the smaller of the two Nadder riders had a rip in his right sleeve where his insignia had been.

"Nadder One, this is Nightmare One; we made it!" Snotlout's voice echoed in response.

"Nadder One, this is Gronkle One…I was okay until I saw this thing…" Fishlegs didn't sound so well.

"Hold it together, Fishlegs," Astrid's voice added to the mix.

"This is Zippleback One, wondering what the plan is and if it involves more explosions." That was Ruffnut, sounding smug.

If Ruffnut was here, then that meant…

There was a scream from the last dragon as it swooped low enough that everyone would be able to hear its rider with or without headsets. "LOOK AT US! WE'RE RIDING ON DRAGONS, ALL OF US!"

"Terror One, get back up here!"

"Every bit the stubborn, bull-headed soldier you ever were," Gobber commented to Stoik.

The dragons flew in a circle so their riders could see each other.

"Fishlegs, break it down!" Hiccup called.

"Okay, um…heavily armored skull and tail suited for smacking and smashing; steer clear of both," Fishlegs began, carefully taking another long look. "If I'm reading the skull shape properly, it has very large ear canals; not very large eyes, probably a lot of scent receptors on that tongue, so it navigates by hearing and smell. Oh, and it's slow on land."

Which led to the question of why it was _on_ land; probably centuries ago it had gotten washed into a cave on the island and couldn't get out, and it started bullying the land dragons into feeding it until it had gotten used to being fed rather than truly hunting. That was hardly important right now. "Okay, Lout, Legs, you guys get in its blind spot and make some noise. Ruff, Tuff, you see if it has a shot limit; make it mad."

"My specialty," Ruffnut boasted.

"Since when?" Tuffnut demanded, "Everyone knows I'm more annoying, see?" and he rolled around on his rope harness until he was under his Terror, flapping his arms around at his sister and making bizarre noises on the communicator.

"Just do what I told you!" Hiccup shouted at them both. "Go ahead and open fire, by the way; keep your aim on things like its eyes, air hole, and ears if you can spot them. Those spots will be sensitive – our weapons don't pack enough punch to get through that thing's hide anywhere else."

"How do you know that?" Snotlout demanded.

"Because," Hiccup replied patiently, "I suspect that as soon as it showed its face the army opened fire with the cannons – aiming for the bulk of its body, of course – and it didn't work. You could always land and ask, of course, or look for a crack in its armor, but I'd rather you got busy. Astrid and I will be back as soon as we can." And the Nadder banked off towards the ships.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut took their circles to in front of the dragon's face. Perhaps the insults they were shouting were actually understood by the thing, perhaps they weren't; certainly it didn't like them there and started blasting at them. Ruffnut and her Zippleback swooped around like nobody's business, dodging flames with relative ease. Tuffnut's Terror wasn't quite so talented, but it seemed that it had been a good thing he didn't have time to pull himself back up onto its back and was simply clinging underneath: that freed up his dragon's wings more.

Snotlout and Fishlegs fired at whatever they could see that looked like it might be an ear; both were rather unnerved when the serpent's large eyes rolled back to fixate on both of them at once.

"Uh, this thing doesn't have a blind spot!" Fishlegs shouted.

* * *

><p>Hiccup and Astrid swooped low over the burning ships, looking for the bound dragon. When they finally spotted him and circled back around, Hiccup got loose from his seating and leaped down among the flames.<p>

"Go help the others!" he shouted up to Astrid, "You're Nadder One now, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear – Night Fury One," she called back as she guided her dragon back to the battle.

Hiccup turned back to Toothless, opening his visor so the dragon could see his face. "Okay, don't worry bud, you're going to be fine," he rattled off in rapid succession as he made his first course of action be to get the muzzle off his friend.

* * *

><p>In the strategy of "make some noise," one crucial detail had been overlooked: rackets worked on all dragons, including their own. It didn't take long before both the Gronkle and the Nightmare had had enough.<p>

"I've lost control of the Gronkle," Fishlegs called, "Snotlout, _do something_!"

There wasn't a great deal that Snotlout _could_ do at that exact instant: he was still trying to recover from the fact that _his_ dragon had thrown him onto the Red Death's face.

Fishlegs screamed all the way down. Fortunately for him, though, the Gronkle hit the ground first; fortunately for the Gronkle, it was bulky and tough-skinned enough to endure digging a hole with its face.

"I'm okay!" Fishlegs shouted as they slowed to a stop, the Gronkle's tail pointing straight up. Then they lost their balance and fell over, the dragon on top of the boy, and he added, "Less okay…" Struggling partway out from under his fallen mount, he saw one of the Red Death's fins coming his way and started trying to crawl away, fear reducing his vocabulary to frantic gibberish.

Meanwhile, up on its head, Snotlout took aim at one of the Red Death's eyes. "I can't miss! What's wrong, buddy – you got something in your eye?" He opened fire.

The Red Death bellowed in pain and it – staggered, was the only real word for that movement. Its foot slammed down practically right next to where Fishlegs and the Gronkle were struggling to get off of each other.

Astrid swooped over, firing a couple of shots at the dragon's tongue. Then she waved at Snotlout. "Yeah – you're the soldier!"

Then…everything went wrong at once. The only good thing that happened was that the Monstrous Nightmare came back from wherever it had flown and caught Snotlout when the Red Death managed to throw him off. The serpent's giant tail swept across the beach and slammed hard into the ship that Hiccup and a still-restrained Toothless were on, and the hull – already under far too much strain – split apart to dump them both in the water.

Letting Toothless drown was unacceptable. Hiccup swam down after the dragon and started pulling at the chains that held the wooden collar down. Whose idea had it been to make this thing _this_ hard to undo? A simple clasping hook would have been enough to foil Toothless, since the dragon lacked opposable thumbs…

His helmet wasn't all that airtight around the visor; the air bubble he'd managed to trap on the way down was degenerating to almost nothing. Everything started to get warm and fuzzy, and blackness closed in over his head…

Something grabbed his neck and pulled him up and back. His oxygen-starved body was limp, unable to fight the thing that was separating him from his dragon _again_. His head broke the surface and water started draining back out of his helmet…he coughed as he was flung up on the beach, and he lifted his visor to look after the big man who was diving back down into the sea.

"Dad?"

About a minute later Toothless crashed up out of the water, dragging General Stoik with him. He shook himself off and looked back at Hiccup, gesturing with his head as if to say, "Well, get on."

"You got it, bud," Hiccup replied, rushing up to the dragon and springing into the saddle. He clipped himself in place – and his father grabbed his arm.

"I'm sorry…for everything." That was rare, hearing the great General Stoik stumbling through a sentence; of course, it was also rare to hear the General apologize.

Hiccup nodded, "Yeah, me too."

"You don't have to go up there." That sounded more like Stoik: firm, protective…

Hiccup puffed out his chest, knowing he looked ridiculous and not caring. "We're soldiers; it's an occupational hazard."

Stoik raised his other hand to meet the first, gripping Hiccup's hand with both of his own. "I'm proud to call you my son." Then he stepped back, having said what needed to be said, and saluted.

Hiccup swallowed down the emotion in his throat, lifting his hand in a return salute. "Thanks, Dad," he managed. Then he closed his helmet, and he and Toothless leaped for the sky.

* * *

><p>The most beautiful thing Astrid had seen all day was Hiccup and Toothless rising from the sea. "He's up!" she screamed for the other riders' benefit.<p>

Everyone still in the air started to get clear. The next part of the plan involved Toothless, and only Toothless: Hiccup had told them all of the Short-Wing Rumblehorn that his dragon had stunned a couple of days ago by short-circuiting its fire.

"_Dragons are not fireproof on the inside; if this thing has firebreath, and that fire functions anything like that of a land dragon, then a full blast from Toothless ought to stop it in its tracks. If it's not…well, we'll have to think of something else."_ Fortunately this thing did have fire, and it seemed to behave like a strange combination of different Tidal-class dragons' fire. And the classified Tidals were technically water-loving land dragons. Hiccup's plan, though insane, still stood a chance of working.

Suddenly Astrid noticed something wrong: though her Nadder was flapping its massive wings like there was no tomorrow, they weren't going forward. In fact, they were slowly going backward – towards the Red Death's gaping maw. That thing had quite the inhaling power. Under other circumstances she _might_ have been impressed; just then, though, she was remembering the poor Broad-Wing Gronkle that had been swallowed whole last night. She clung to her feeble rope harness for all she was worth as the rest of her body was lifted up, and thought wistfully of rigging the last of her guns into grenades to throw back into the dragon's mouth; unfortunately she didn't dare let go of the rope with either hand to make the attempt.

A shriek rent the air – one that everyone knew from numerous raids before.

"NIGHT FURY!"

"Everybody get down!"

Toothless's explosive burst hit the side of the side of the Red Death's jaw, disrupting its inhale and cutting off the vacuum stream. The sudden release caused the Nadder to flip clear over, throwing Astrid before she could react.

For the second time in her life, Astrid was hurtling through the air and screaming her lungs out. This time, however, she was plunging downwards and there were no dragons holding onto her.

Hiccup had been halfway expecting Astrid to fall, or else Toothless had seen her; they reached the peak of an ascent and changed direction, diving back towards her at breakneck speed. The distance closed…Toothless snapped out his claws…

"Did you get her?" Hiccup asked as they leveled, looking left and right in a careful attempt to see his dragon's feet.

Toothless tilted his head upside down and looked at his own paws. There was Astrid, dangling upside-down by one boot; her weapon belts and her helmet had all come off with the speed of her stop, and she grinned at the dragon with a mix of pain and relief. Toothless offered back his own gummy grin – and then flipped her over in his paws, dropping her on the beach as carefully as he could.

Astrid staggered a few paces and fell; the rescue had wrenched her leg pretty badly. But in spite of her own pain, when she looked up after the two of them and saw that Hiccup was looking back she drew her mouthpiece back down and said, "I'll be fine; go."

Hiccup took a long, careful look at the fins the Red Death was using to move. "Those look like wings! Okay, let's see if it can use them!"

Toothless understood. They reached the height of their climb going up, and then the height of their speed going down. Faster and faster, straight towards the Red Death's horny beak – and then Toothless fired at where its nose would have been, right before he pulled back up.

Well, well; that was a sensitive spot after all. It recoiled swiftly back onto its body and folded its legs over its head, and for a moment all was still.

Then…

The Red Death lifted its fins…and they unfolded to be much, much larger, wings in truth. They were slightly tattered, with dead flakes falling away; centuries away from the sea had all but dried them out.

"Do you think that did it?" Hiccup asked, looking over his shoulder.

Like a giant, compressed spring being released, the serpent's coils straightened – flinging into the sky a creature that didn't look like it should be capable of supporting its own weight in flight. It wobbled slightly as it leveled out, its tail churning like a giant propeller to aid its wings…and it stayed up.

"Well, it can fly," Hiccup commented to Toothless – who took off towards the sea stacks.

The Red Death pursued them, bellowing every time it plowed through a stack that the smaller and more agile Night Fury had veered around. If the falling rocks were injuring it, it showed no sign.

Hiccup looked at the clouds; they were dark with the smoke of this dragon's fire. It looked like a layer of night in the late afternoon sky.

Perfect.

"All right, bud; time to disappear!" He kicked the stirrup to "climb" and they shot straight up. He glanced back a time or two to make sure they weren't outright losing the Red Death, and also to keep an eye out for flames; it seemed to be keeping up okay, and it wasn't wasting its breath to spew fire. It did try once – but the effort of breathing the stuff straight up meant that Hiccup saw it coming a long time before it came, and was able to coax a dodge out of his dragon as the inferno added more smoke to the sky.

The Red Death's jaws opened…snapped shut…

And swung around in the darkness, confused. All it could see was sooty black clouds, all it could smell was smoke, and it wasn't hearing anything except its own wings and labored breathing. It hadn't tasted dragon or human, so it knew the Night Fury was still around somewhere…it bellowed in rage, demanding that the cowardly little black show himself and face it.

When the Night Fury did engage in combat, it was with an exploding burst to the left wing. As the Red Death howled and swiveled in search of the creature that had just mocked it, he swung around to the other side and let another blast fly into the right wing. Back and forth, up and down the Night Fury dove, spitting explosions at the great creature's wings; this was his home, striking from the dark at his foes.

"How many of these shots do you have, anyway?" Hiccup eventually whispered. Since he didn't have any guns of his own, now would be a very bad time for Toothless to run out – although he thought he'd counted more than the average limit of ten, including the one back at the ring and the two while the Red Death was on the ground.

Toothless rasped something reminiscent of a laugh before blasting again. Hiccup _felt_ the churning of the fire sacs under his hands, in Toothless's sturdy neck; they seemed to be a little more than half full, although not all of the sacs were actually firing.

_Is he stretching his natural shot limit by combining different types of fire?_ That would certainly explain how this dragon's fire was exploding balls instead of long streams; it might even explain his extraordinary accuracy.

_Speaking of fire…_

The Red Death suddenly went berserk. It started breathing fire, sustaining the stream long enough to fling it in every direction.

Hiccup screamed a warning and Toothless dodged – barely.

"Barely" was a tail getting doused in fire. "Barely" was the fire sticking to a tail wing of old and new metals, eating through the hollowed flaps like powerful acid.

Hiccup looked back and _knew_ that there was no repairing that; certainly not here and now. "Okay, time's up…let's see if this works." They veered together and headed straight towards the Red Death. "Come on! Is that all you've got?"

Toothless roared his vote about the other dragon's competence.

The Red Death snapped on empty air trying to catch them – and then turned to follow as they took the fight into a dive.

Faster and faster they went; Toothless's flapping got a little more erratic as the response time from the false tail degenerated.

"Come on bud, we're good, just a little bit longer," Hiccup encouraged desperately. He knew the ground was coming up fast…they only needed time, but at this point every minute of time was a stolen minute before they crashed. And then…

No. He wouldn't think about that. He would focus on the here and now.

He looked back and saw the Red Death gathering one more stream in its mouth. There was no dodging this one: they were going too fast. If they missed their cue, they'd be bathed in fire – and while the fireproof Toothless would probably survive, his gear wouldn't and Hiccup certainly wouldn't. And Toothless probably _wouldn't_ survive the landing, especially with the sea serpent coming down on top of him.

"Hold, Toothless," Hiccup breathed. He counted to three, and then, "NOW!"

Toothless spun in the air, aiming Hiccup at the ground, and spat one final shot straight into the Red Death's mouth with the sound of a firing torpedo.

The great dragon spasmed in the air as it suddenly found itself with a mouthful of raw fire instead of its ready-to-breathe venom. Hiccup knew the instant the clouds cleared enough to see the ground, because its eyes widened in alarm and it spread its wings to slow itself – and that was when its true weakness was unveiled. When its skin dried out, it became even more susceptible to fire; perhaps even especially to Toothless's fire, as it had an extremely dry base anyway and would offer no hydration in trade for the burn. As the wind caught the spots weakened by flame, they turned into flaming holes and gradually ripped the wings to shreds.

The Red Death was going down in flames, completely out of control.

Toothless managed to straighten out. Then he opened his own wings and caught the wind at an angle, whipping out from under the serpent's jaws in the nick of time.

Every soldier on the ground had to duck and cover as the massive dragon slammed into the ground – and exploded as all the fuel it had left inside it ignited at once, filling the air with fire and dust.

Hiccup and Toothless shot skyward again, trying to outrun the explosion and get clear of the sea serpent's long body. They could no longer turn, or at least not fast enough; they could only use speed. Unfortunately, the false tail had reached its limit and snapped off, making it impossible to steer at all.

Worse, they hadn't cleared the serpent's tail yet – and as the oversized paddle fell towards them, they couldn't even dodge.

"No…no!" Those were the last words Hiccup was able to say before the tail hit them with all the force of a tsunami.

Toothless spun in the air, confused for a moment; then he saw his human falling free of the saddle, back towards the flames. He knew that humans weren't fireproof; he also suspected that even if humans were fireproof, Hiccup wouldn't survive a landing from this high up.

No. Toothless wouldn't permit _his human_ to die after all this.

He aimed his nose after Hiccup and clawed at the air, beating his wings to fly himself in the only direction he had left: down. Extending his paws – and his claws for just a little more reach – he sought to catch his first human friend before the flames did.


	16. Chapter 16

_Dragon's nest_

"Hiccup, do you read me? Respond," Stoik barked into his communicator as he staggered around ground zero. When there was no answer he took a deep breath and tried again, "Night Fury One, report!" Still no answer… "Son," before he could finish the new command, he saw a black shape on the ground.

_The Night Fury…Toothless_…where one of them was, surely the other would be. Hiccup had made it abundantly clear that he would rather perish himself than watch his friend die.

_Oh, surely not…please…_Stoik stumbled over the rough ground straight for the black dragon, praying as he had never prayed before that the worst had not happened.

Toothless was all wrapped up in his wings. His eyes were closed; he seemed to be asleep, although his dreams seemed to be less than comfortable as he was shifting around. The cables on his tail had twisted and snapped, the mock wing long gone; the saddle was badly damaged, possibly by the landing.

Hiccup wasn't on the saddle. In fact, he wasn't anywhere to be seen.

If General Stoik needed any proof that his scrawny little son meant anything significant to him, he had it now: the thought that he'd just lost Hiccup brought him to his knees. "Oh, son…I did this."

If only he had listened before…if only…Hiccup and his friends had gotten here _riding on dragons_, hadn't they? If he'd listened back in the ring, accepted that dragons could be trained and started training them, he could have assembled something that Berk hadn't had since the days of the battalion first getting stranded out here: an air force. _Then_ Hiccup could have told them about the Red Death – or even if he didn't, the first search with the air force would have turned up the nest and they would have found the Red Death before it ever got out of the mountain. They would have seen that the real enemy wasn't the force of dragons that was raiding them, but the force behind the raids. Then all their time and attention would have gone to…Stoik didn't know, maybe rigging up high explosives disguised as farm animals and either letting a raid take those away or having the air force haul in a "kill" and bring down the Red Death that way. No ships destroyed, probably not even any men lost.

What a might-have-been…if only Stoik had listened to his son back in the ring.

Toothless groaned softly, opened his eyes and looked at Stoik. An expression seemed to come over his scaly black face, as if he was thinking, "Oh, I know you: you broke my restraints with your bare hands."

"Oh, son…I'm so sorry…" Stoik whispered.

The dragon seemed to grasp the big man's theory that his son was dead. With a grunt of effort Toothless unfurled his wings, revealing a small boy with broken armor resting in his paws.

"Hiccup!" Startled back into action, Stoik ran up to the dragon (taking care not to step on the wing; his boots were enough to damage it) and took Hiccup in his arms. In a moment Hiccup's helmet was off and Stoik was stroking his hair; he was unconscious at the least, his face unsettlingly peaceful in repose. In another moment _Stoik's_ helmet was off, and he lifted his son's chest to his filters-off earpiece.

The soft, steady thumping was music to his ears.

"He's alive," Stoik tried to bellow, but tears choked his voice. "You brought him back alive!"

Cheers went up from the remains of the army as the news reached them that their hero of the day was still alive. Astrid's eyes lit up, and she looked almost ready to burst into tears of joy herself.

Even the dragons seemed to understand that something good had just been discovered, and started waving their wings and bobbing their heads in excitement. And there were a lot of dragons: the creatures that had evacuated had returned, perhaps when they sensed that the monster they served in fear was destroyed.

Probably just as well – with the ships destroyed, they needed _some_ way to get home. Stoik would have to ask those dragon-riding privates about how to train more dragons; and when they all got home, he was handing out promotions. But first…

Stoik gently rested a large hand on Toothless's head. "Thank you…for saving my son."

Gobber came hobbling over to look. "Well, you know…_most_ of him."

Stoik half-glared at Gobber for ruining the mood – but he couldn't deny that Hiccup's left leg below the knee was broken and mangled beyond repair. It seemed like Hiccup had broken that same leg once before, a while ago; just because it had healed didn't mean that it had returned to its former strength.

* * *

><p><em>Chief's dwellings, 1000 hours<em>

Toothless carefully leaned over the bed and sniffed Hiccup. It had been a few days…the boy had finally entered into a natural sleep and had been taken home from that clean-smelling place, off of those strange fluids and needles. Toothless was sure it was time to wake up now – for one thing, he was getting antsy; the man with the two metal attachments had made new equipment from the notes, but only Hiccup could help him get the exercise he really needed.

Toothless made an attempt to say the word that was always addressed to his rider. "_Hurk-hup…_" Not too bad. Of course, if he woke up to it, that would be fabulous…

Green eyes flickered open and focused on the dragon.

Toothless got all excited, as if his successfully saying Hiccup's name had been what triggered the awakening, and he started gently nosing the boy.

"Hey, Toothless," Hiccup murmured. His body felt too heavy to move, but also kind of good; he was completely relaxed and warm except for his foot…

Toothless got even more excited at the sound of his voice, and started nuzzling more vigorously and trying to lick.

"Yeah, I'm happy to see you too, bud," Hiccup found he had to actually motivate his arms into movement, just to defend himself from his own overexcited dragon. Then Toothless's paw landed squarely on his gut and he jerked to a sitting position with an, "Oof," before he quite realized that he was going to move. Then he opened his eyes again and stared, startled.

"Uh…I'm in my house…" he focused on Toothless again. "You're…in my house…does my dad know you're here?"

Hiccup being alert was way too much excitement for the dragon to contain. He danced all around the room; nuzzled Hiccup's face again, and jumped up on some of the equipment – all the while ignoring Hiccup's half-formed commands to sit still.

Hiccup tried to stand…and the odd lack of response in his left foot finally prompted him to uncover his legs. What he saw sent his spirits crashing – into shock, at least, which was better than depression.

His leg was gone. Fitted over the remaining stump below the knee was merely a plastic cap.

Toothless came over, finally calm again, and looked at Hiccup with some expression akin to…pity? Or was that an apology? He sniffed the stump and rested his face against it, pressing lightly.

Hiccup cringed at the feeling. It didn't hurt – exactly – but it was very uncomfortable, and his _head_ hurt trying to process the sensation of something touching him _right there_. It was invasive.

"You…probably don't know what I'm saying, but…did they leave a, you know, spare leg around here anywhere?" That sounded really weird. "Because I left my other one back at the dragons' nest, and I don't think I'm ever going to go back there to find it." That sounded even weirder, like a human being's original legs could go on and off like prosthetics.

Toothless looked at him – darn it, but Hiccup missed the days when he could simply look at that charming black face and know for sure what kind of expression it was; the first thing he thought of now was that the dragon thought he'd lost his mind.

How long had he been out, and what else fell out of his head besides the ability to truly comprehend his own dragon's face?

Toothless shuffled to a different part of the room, sniffed something – and then picked it up and carried it over.

Well, what do you know; he did understand. It was a prosthetic – it didn't look much like a real foot, but it looked like it was supposed to function like one. Hiccup managed to secure it to his stump (and wished the scar would stop sending too much sensation up to his brain) and, with a deep breath, hefted himself to his feet.

God, but this thing was uncomfortable; like his shoe was tied way too tight. The first step – more of a hobble – sent twinges of pain through his leg. Maybe striding out with all of his strength would be better…

Not even close. The pain wasn't too much worse, and all on its own it probably would have been bearable, but his body had gotten out of practice with moving. His muscles responded to the added pain by giving out, and he toppled forward.

To land on Toothless, fortunately; the dragon had seen him going down and caught him, carefully setting him upright again and holding him up with a shoulder and a wing.

"Okay…thanks, bud," Hiccup panted, taking a firm hold of Toothless's shoulders and readying himself for the trek to the door.

No strides for him; he would settle for hobbles until his body started cooperating again.

It was nice, really, how he and Toothless matched now. They needed each other more than ever.

Hiccup opened the door…

MONSTROUS NIGHTMARE!

He slammed the door shut again, shocked. What was going on out there? Where was his headset? He couldn't call anyone…well, that mostly just meant that he would have to actually go outside and find out for himself what was going on. He hoped it wasn't _another_ raid, because he would never be able to outrun a dragon now.

"Toothless, stay here," Hiccup ordered. Then, more carefully, he opened the door.

That Nightmare had a rider – Snotlout – and he was shouting commands at other dragon riders. Other riders…who were not Astrid, Fishlegs, or the twins…those were full-grown veterans.

"What?" Hiccup gasped, looking around. What he was seeing made absolutely no sense.

Dragons and soldiers were marching around town together. Mounted Nadders were perching on a nearby roof, and a building had been gutted for more land-oriented dragons to climb around inside. A feeding station had been constructed, and was being filled up with fish by a couple of Tidal dragons; other, smaller dragons were clustered around its base, waiting eagerly for the big dragons to walk away. There was no dragon fire, no gunfire, and no violence of any kind.

"I knew it: I'm dead!"

Paternal laughter rippled off to his starboard, and Stoik came up to pat his shoulder. "No, but you gave it your best shot. So, what do you think?" He led Hiccup gently down among the battalion – who noticed the boy instantly and came rushing up.

It was like when he'd been popular as a dragon conqueror; except this time, somehow, it felt more real. Hiccup touched the spot where his father's hand rested – and found, to his surprise, that the torn part had been sewn back on his sleeve. He looked at the Berk insignia and his rank patch…and his mouth dropped open as he counted another stripe. He'd been promoted to corporal while he was unconscious?

"Turns out all we needed was just a little more of…" running out of words, Stoik gestured and simply added, "This."

"You just gestured at all of me," Hiccup responded numbly – although he thought he was beginning to grasp this.

Gobber interrupted the conversation, gesturing at the prosthetic. "Well…most of you. That bit's my handiwork – with a little Hiccup flair thrown in. Think it'll do?"

Hiccup studied it critically. "I might make a few tweaks…" he said casually, getting chuckles from everyone else.

Suddenly a fist connected hard with his shoulder, sending him off balance. It was Astrid – with an extra stripe on her sleeve, too. Did they all get promoted for that crazy maneuver?

"That's for scaring me," she informed him.

"What? Is it always going to be this way? Because…" before Hiccup could finish his complaint, however, Astrid held him still and kissed him.

Full on the lips.

Right in front of everybody.

Hiccup stared in shock as she drew back, his face heating up. Then he tried to play cool – well, at least a little less like he'd never been kissed before. "I could get used to it."

Astrid just smirked.

Gobber placed a full load of tech in Hiccup's arms – a new saddle, and a new tail wing with the Berk insignia on it. "Welcome home, lad."

Hiccup felt like he was on top of the world. He'd lost so much…and gained so much more.

"Night Fury! Get down!"

Hiccup turned in surprise as Toothless suddenly bowled over every soldier who had stood there looking in all the wrong directions instead of just getting out of the way. Once in front of his rider, he started wiggling in excitement – making it very clear that what he wanted to do was _fly!_

Hiccup laughed sheepishly and glanced at Astrid, who was beaming.

* * *

><p>Several flight checks later Corporal Hiccup locked his leg into the stirrup and hooked his safety lines to the saddle. He'd found his headset – or more to the point, Astrid had tracked it down – and was now ready for the shrieking speeds of the Night Fury. Speaking of Astrid, she was beside him, way up high on her Deadly Nadder.<p>

"Are you ready?" Hiccup asked Toothless.

Toothless glanced back and tossed his head, as if saying, "I've been waiting days for this!"

After one last look around at a sight he never thought he would ever see – soldiers and dragons working together – they started racing around town.

_This is Berk. It snows nine months of the year and hails the other three._

_Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here are even more so._

_The only upsides are the pets. While most people have ponies or parrots…_

_We have…_

_DRAGONS!_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's note:<strong>__ Finally done! And almost keeping to that chapter-a-day thing, too! To answer a user from a while back (sorry, I don't remember at the moment who you are), I currently don't have any plans for a sequel; military just is not my thing for ease of use, and I'm simply not emotionally ready yet to cope with writing the second movie. We'll see what happens._

_If I write another HTTYD fanfiction, what I think is more likely is that I'll go for a modern non-military fic. That has a lot of cute followings, at least I think so. The moments with the prosthetic up there came from one especially long modern fic I read once (titled "Chasing Thunderstorms"; special thanks to Foxy'sGirl for doing the research for hers)._

_Thanks for all your support! ^_^_


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